Arrow Finishes Second in National Best-of-Show College Media Association Competition
03/15/2017

Southeast Missouri State University’s student newspaper, the Arrow, was awarded second place March 14 in the David L. Adams Apple Awards contest at the College Media Association’s Spring National College Media Convention in New York City. The Arrow received the national honor, which is the competition’s best-of-show category, for Best News Delivery for its 2016 election coverage. “It's a great honor to receive an Apple Award because the competition is open to news organizations from schools of all sizes,” said Dr. Tamara Buck, faculty advisor to the Arrow and multimedia journalism coordinator in Southeast’s Department of Mass Media. “I believe this demonstrates our emphasis on instruction with a strong experiential learning component is helping us to train leaders who are capable of producing comprehensive, multidimensional news content that can be distributed across multiple platforms.” The Best News Delivery category recognizes excellence in a news outlet’s efforts to distribute information about a single event, along with updates through social media platforms. The Arrow’s election coverage included pre-election coverage of issues important to college voters, election night coverage via their website and Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook platforms, and post-election coverage. [caption id='attachment_25049' align='alignright' width='300'] Arrow staff work to produce election 2016 coverage on election night last November.[/caption] “I knew the planning that went into the election coverage, as well as the execution of the plan, was deserving of recognition,” Buck said. “It makes me proud to see the students' hard work recognized on a national level, and I'm excited about the additional exposure it provides for the Department of Mass Media and our partnership with Rust Communications.” Buck and Logan Young, Arrow content advisor and features editor at the Southeast Missourian, accompanied three Arrow staff members to the conference. They are Kara Hartnett, digital managing editor and incoming editor for 2017-2018; Katelyn Mary Skaggs, news editor; and Darryeon Bishop, videographer. Hartnett of Metamora, Illinois, and Skaggs of Eureka, Missouri, are multimedia journalism majors at Southeast. Bishop of St. Louis, Missouri, is a TV/film major. She said she is especially pleased the Arrow’s election coverage included both editorial and advertising content. She said she and Mike Simmons, instructor of mass media, collaborated to develop the Arrow’s election coverage as a joint project of MC429 “Media Management.”  Simmons supervised advertising teams in the class as they created video and print promotional content distributed on the Arrow's website and social media platforms. Buck and Young supervised the editorial team's news coverage. “Our curricular collaboration between advertising and multimedia journalism students through the MC429 course and the Arrow is something that distinguishes our Mass Media program from others,' said Dr. Karie Hollerbach, chair of the Department of Mass Media. 'Winning a national award for a project that both groups of students actively worked on together is a clear confirmation that we are doing good things through that collaboration.”