Students, Alums Honored

Columbia students, faculty and alumni have been busy picking up journalism awards and nominations for their excellent work.

The Columbia Chronicle has been named the top non-daily college newspaper in the United States by the Society of Professional Journalists. And several students and alums have won prestigious Peter Lisagor awards, given by the Chicago Headline Club, Chicago's chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. And Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, associate professor of Journalism, was honored with the 2013 college-wide Excellence in Teaching award.

Recent graduate Ellyn Fortino won an award for her work with Austin Talks online news site. Current student Kaitlyn Mattson and recent Columbia journalism grads Sam Charles, Rui Kaneya and Angela Caputo won for their work with the Chicago Reporter. Adjuncts David Bernstein and Noah Isackson are finalists for their work with Chicago magazine, and Martha Irvine won for her work with the Associated Press.

Fernando Diaz, a 2004 Columbia journalism grad who is managing editor of Hoy, has won a 2013 Studs Terkel Media Award, which honors journalists whose work reflects Terkel's "people-centered'' journalistic approach. Past winners of this honor have included Columbia full-time journalism faculty members Curtis Lawrence and Teresa Puente, as well as adjuncts Natalie Moore,  Martha Irvine and Steve Franklin.

Meanwhile, two Columbia College Chicago broadcast journalism students won Crystal Pillar Awards in recent months, and others were nominated. Eileen Sears won best sports feature for her piece on sled hockey for the Multimedia Sports Reporting class' television show Beyond the Game. Jade Lagestee took home the best arts and entertainment award for her feature about AKIRA, the fashion-centered Chicago-based chain of clothing stores that aired on Metro Minutes.

Student Wyatt Danz was nominated for best spot news reporter, and the student-run program Newsbeat was nominated for best show.

Columbia tied with Northwestern in its number of wins and competed alongside other strong journalism schools in the region, such as Marquette University in Milwaukee.

ECHO magazine took first place among feature magazines in the American Collegiate Press Best of Show awards, and the Columbia Chronicle also won an ACP Best of Show award in the weekly college newspaper category for its Oct. 29 edition. There were nearly 400 entries in that category, and the Chronicle was one of only 10 papers cited.

Students' projects for ChicagoTalks, the online community news site created by Columbia faculty Barb Iverson and Suzanne McBride, won first- and third-place for online in-depth reporting in the Society of Professional Journalists' Mark of Excellence regional awards. First place went to the ChicagoTalks project investigating the use of tax-increment-finance districts in Chicago, which was also published in the New York Times, and third place went to a project on campus security.

Echo Magazine, the student-produced Columbia magazine that has both online and in-print editions, won second place in the Best Student Magazine category.