Northern Star earns national awards

by Mark McGowan

NIU’s student-run newspaper, The Northern Star, has earned headlines of its own.

The paper’s Wednesday, Nov. 3, issue – the morning after Election Day, it featured coverage only a few hours old when it hit the streets – won “Best of Show” honors for four-year daily tabloids at the National College Media Convention held the weekend of Nov. 5 in Nashville.

NSRadio’s coverage of a Huskie football game captured second-place honors in a category where the rivals consisted of solely college radio stations rather than an online broadcast operated by a student newspaper.

Finally, the Star’s nationally lauded Web site – www.northernstar.info – was among a dozen schools that collected Online Pacemaker awards, the collegiate equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize.

“Our staff is really excited,” said managing editor Kristin Cavarretta, who will succeed longtime editor Mark Bieganski next semester. “Each person could feel like they contributed to that (Nov. 3) product. We worked really hard.”

“These awards are a testament to the everyday effort everyone puts in here,” Bieganski said. “There were lots of smiles and lots of ‘Are you serious?’ – we’ve all been in a really good mood the last few days.”

Adding to their pride is the caliber of the competition, including Northwestern University, home of the celebrated Medill School of Journalism. The Daily Northwestern took third place, behind the Arizona Daily Wildcat of the University of Arizona. Eastern Illinois University and Duke University rounded out the top five.

“It’s always tough competing against those schools with well-known schools of journalism, where the rankings are based on their school, not their product,” Cavarretta said. “It always feels good to be recognized, especially at a national convention.”

“Other school newspapers have advantages that Northern doesn’t have when it comes to journalism. It’s the far more prestigious schools that typically win national awards,” Star adviser Jim Killam added. “For us to compete in that realm says a lot about how hard our students work and how dedicated they are to this. I’m just proud for them.”

Student employees across all the news operations, including reporters, photographers, copy editors, page designers and managers, worked until 5:30 a.m. on the Nov. 3 issue before sending it press.

Bieganksi, Cavarretta and their team of editors also spent plenty of time preparing for Election Day, planning stories in advance, training reporters with no election-coverage experience, dispatching staff across the county and as far away as St. Charles and budgeting a late deadline for 15 stories.

“It was a huge success,” Bieganski said. “An election like this only comes every four years, and this was their time to shine.”

The radio’s award, coming only a year after broadcasting began, also is considered a major accomplishment.

“We’re sort of competing in foreign territory,” Killam said. “To have a student radio station generated by the newspaper, as far as I know, is unique.”

Of course, the award merely confirms that NSRadio is doing something right: Huskie fans overloaded the online server during the broadcast of the season opener in Maryland, Killam said.

Meanwhile, the Star’s Web presence has become a major task this year. Jeremy Norman, who created, maintained and constantly enhanced the frequently awarded site, graduated last spring. A team of students now is employed to manage the homepage.

“Jeremy left some huge shoes to fill,” Cavarretta said. “Everyone said he was a machine.”

Yet the Web site continues to attract thousands of visitors each day and remains highly versatile, she said, featuring virtual reams of content not found in the print edition.

“We’re one of the few newspapers doing online-only, and that’s something we’re proud of,” she said.

“A lot of other schools are looking at it. Professional papers are looking at it. We hear from them, so we know they are,” Killam said. “Alumni are looking at it, too.”

A similar challenge awaits the news staff. Fifteen of the Star’s editors, Bieganski and Cavarretta included, graduate in the spring.

“Training will become our big focus,” Bieganski said, “so we can carry the same caliber into next year’s paper.”

11-15-04