Cedars wins top awards in Ohio News Media Association collegiate newspaper contest

COLUMBUS – Cedars won its sixth straight Frank E. Deaner Award as the best small-college newspaper in Ohio at the recent Ohio News Media Association Convention.

Cedars placed first in seven of the 10 categories in Division B for schools with enrollment under 10,000. Eight schools entered the competition.

The Cedars placed first as a staff in the following categories:

• News coverage ahead of Capital and Xavier. The judge cited broad campus and community coverage that ties in well with the readcedars.com website
• Sports coverage ahead of Ashland and John Carroll. The judge cited the use of photos and quality of stories, especially Josh Burris’ piece about student basketball assistants.
• Design ahead of Capital and Ashland. The judge liked the covers and said the inside pages were clean with good uses of photos and graphics.
• Website ahead of Capital and Ashland. The judge praised the relevance, ease of navigation and ability to engage the reader.

Cedars swept all three places in the best use of multimedia category.

• Erica Zichi (video), Josh Woolverton (story) and Alex Weber (photos) took first place for their report on VOLT, the new training system for athletes. The judge praised the explanatory report for its ability to show people outside of athletics why the program is important.
• Micah Gerber (video), Naomi Harward (photos) and Josh Burris (story) took second place for their coverage of Grace Norman’s return to campus after winning a gold medal at the Paralympics.
• Gerber (video) and Harward (photos) placed third for their pregame and postgame coverage of the annual Gridiron Classic. The judge said, “For pure fun, maybe the best thing I judged in this year’s awards.”

In other categories:

• • Cedars staffers placed first and second in in-depth reporting. Naomi Harward’s story “Serving Those with Addiction” placed first. Also named on the award was Amy Sririntrachai for her work on the charts that helped tell the story. The judge said the story was an example of how to tell a local story about a national problem. In second place, was Alexandria Hentschel’s story about the campus’ concealed carry discussion. Keegan D’Alfonso and Sririntrachai were also named on the award for their work on the student survey and charts.
  • Cedars also took the top two spots in photojournalism. First was for a group of sports photos taken by Harward, Anna Pizarro and Christian Cortes. Harward placed second with a group of photos of behind-the-scenes action of “The Music Man.”

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• Cedars placed second and third in headline writing behind Capital.

The other papers competing against Cedars in Division B were from Ashland, Capital, Xavier, Shawnee State, Otterbein, Findlay and John Carroll.

Ohio University won Division A over Cincinnati, Miami, Sinclair Community College and Ohio State.