The Santa Clara wins three national awards

From Staff Reports

The Santa Clara won three national Story of the Year awards -- including two first place honors -- at the Associated Collegiate Press National College Media Convention in Washington, D.C., this past weekend.

Editor in Chief Jeremy Herb and '07 graduate and former TSC reporter Megan O'Connor both won first place Story of the Year awards at the convention. The Santa Clara Editorial Board won a third place Story of the Year award.

Herb won a first place award in the feature story category for the story, "Santa Clara's underground coke scene," published in April.

O'Connor's first place award was in the diversity story category, for her April story, "Undocumented and unemployed."

The Editorial Board won a third place award in the editorials and opinion pieces category for the editorial following the January theme parties, titled "Fighting ignorance through diversity."

The three individual awards are the most The Santa Clara has ever received in a single year for the Story of the Year contests, which are open to universities nationwide. Five to six finalists are selected in each category.

The last time TSC won a Story of the Year award was in 2002, when 2002 Editor in Chief Nate Swinton wrote a story on convicted murderer Dana Ewell, who attended Santa Clara in the early 1990s.

Only Harvard University's The Harvard Crimson and Duke University's The Chronicle had more finalist nominations than The Santa Clara in the six Story of the Year categories.

TSC and The Harvard Crimson were the only newspapers to win two first place Story of the Year awards. Other first place winners came from Indiana University and Ball State University.

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