My classmates and I have won an SPJ award!

On April 13, the Society of Professional Journalists awarded my classmates and I a Mark of Excellence Award at our regional conference in Santa Fe! (We're region nine.) Here's a link to the official SPJ news release: spj.org/news

The award was in the "breaking news (large collegiate newspapers)" category, for our story "Family, friends, mourn loss of Powell children." I wasn't even aware we had won the award until Kaye Nelson, one of my great journalism mentors and formerly a full-time editor for The Universe, congratulated me and my classmates on Facebook.

I will always remember writing this particular story. I had heard the sad news about Josh Powell blowing up his house, killing him and his two young sons, just before I stepped into Advanced Print Reporting, my first class of the day. The following is from a previous blog post I wrote about it:

I first heard the news yesterday morning when I picked up the newspaper. When I arrived at my Advanced Print Reporting class, Professor Campbell announced that we were going to "swarm" the story - meaning we were going to cover this breaking news with an article for the Universe. I volunteered to write, others volunteered to interview different people, and we saw what we could accomplish in an hour. My classmate Rebecca finished writing the story when I had to go to work. She ended up writing most of it.

Sad news; good learning experience.

An interesting take on jailed Amish

This Associated Press story caught my eye as I was logging into my email this morning. It's a perfect example of taking a unique take on what may otherwise be just another story.

Ohio Amish face unfamiliar life in federal prison

CLEVELAND (AP) — Sixteen Amish men and women who have lived rural, self-sufficient lives surrounded by extended family and with little outside contact are facing regimented routines in a federal prison system where almost half of inmates are behind bars for drug offenses and modern conveniences such as television will be a constant temptation.
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Washington Post summary of Obama's plan to reduce gun violence

This is the kind of thing I like to see: Within the Washington Post story "Obama unveils gun-control proposals," the writers have linked to the very documents they're reporting about. To me, it's a mark of good reporting when the journalists make their sources clearly known, and especially when they make the same sources they referenced available to the public. Unfortunately, you can't make a live interviewee available to the public in the same way, but it's always a nice touch to link to documents when you can. This transparent, reader-empowering journalism is the kind of example I want to follow. Well done, WP!

White House: Gun Violence Reduction Executive Actions: Includes a description of the documents and other related links. Check it out!

Linking to documents can be a long, painstaking process depending on the story you're working on, but personally I think it's worth the extra time. It really proves whether you've done your homework, which improves your credibility and the trust between you and the reader. I've published a couple data-driven stories myself where I purposefully took the extra time to link to or clearly cite my sources:

"A few of the oldest, longest continuous things in the LDS Church," published July 12, 2012, on the front page of section C in Salt Lake City's Deseret News.

"Relic of the past: Home of future legends," published February 18, 2011, in the double truck (meaning it was the main article of the edition) of BYU's Daily Universe. ...Back when it was a daily paper.

(If you're interested, you can check out my portfolio for more of my stuff.)