Student Newspaper Wins Top State Award

Knox College's weekly student newspaper, The Knox Student, recently won the top college newspaper award in Illinois -- first place for General Excellence, along with eleven other awards, from the Illinois College Press Association. In all, the staff and its members received five first place awards, one second place award, three third place awards and three honorable mentions. The ICPA awards were presented at the organization's annual conference, February 19-20 in Chicago.

Photos: above, managing editor Evan Temchin and photo co-editor John Williams; left, editor-in-chief Laura Miller

Judges selected by the ICPA determined The Knox Student was the best college newspaper in the state for 2009 in its division -- nondaily under 4,000 circulation. Other first place award winners for general excellence in their divisions for 2009 were the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois-Urbana and the Columbia Chronicle at Columbia College in Chicago.

Other first place award winners for The Knox Student are John Baillie for Sports Column, Evan Temchin for Sports Photography, and Laura Miller, who won two awards, for Editorial Writing and In-Depth Reporting. Miller, a senior from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is editor-in-chief this year. Temchin, a senior from Meadow Vista, California, was photo editor in 2009 and is managing editor this year. Baillie, a 2009 graduate from Stillwater, Minnesota, was the paper's photo editor in 2008.

"These awards are the culmination of a lot of hard work by the staff," Miller said. "We went into 2009 with specific goals -- to make the paper more professional and more journalistic, and to work on the design. This shows that we have been successful."

According to college records, this is the first time in at least a quarter-century that The Knox Student has won the ICPA's General Excellence award, the top college newspaper prize in the state.

"I'm really proud of the students," said Tom Martin, the paper's advisor. "This is a talented group, and they worked hard over the past year to improve TKS -- they made it the best small college newspaper in the state. That's quite an accomplishment. They have raised the expectation for future TKS staffs."

Martin has advised the paper since January 2009. Prior to that he taught a journalism class. He has been a newspaper editor for 18 years, the past five as editor of The Register-Mail in Galesburg.

Other awards received by The Knox Student or individual staff members were: second place award to Temchin for Feature Photography; third place awards to Miller for Feature Story Writing, Dan Dyrda for Critical Review, and to the newspaper staff for Headline Writing. Winning Honorable Mentions were Temchin and Matt Wheaton for Sports Page Design, Miller and Temchin for Front Page Design, and Colin Davis for Sports News Story. Davis and Wheaton are sports editors this year.

Following is a complete list of awards to The Knox Student and its staff:

First Place

• General Excellence, awarded to the entire staff, based on three issues published in February, April and October 2009
• Sports Column, awarded to John Baillie for "Coach Heimann," a tribute to the late Tim Heimann, Knox's basketball coach for 25 years, published April 2, 2009; on-line at http://www.theknoxstudent.com/newsroom/article/coach-heimann/
• Sports Photo, awarded to Temchin for a photo taken at a Knox basketball game, published February 13, 2009; on-line at http://www.theknoxstudent.com/newsroom/photo/818/ and at http://www.evantemchin.com/Recent_Accomplishments.html
• In-Depth Reporting, awarded to Miller for "Pushing the Boundaries," a five-part series on growing demands for campus facilities, published in October and November 2009; on-line at http://www.theknoxstudent.com/newsroom/article/study-space-demand-grows/
• Editorial, awarded to Miller and the paper's editorial board, for "Thoughts from the Embers: Coca-Cola," published October 29, 2009; on-line at http://www.theknoxstudent.com/newsroom/article/thoughts-from-the-embers-coca-cola/

Second Place

• Feature Photo, awarded to Evan Temchin for a front page photograph of a performance of the Knox Dance Squad, published October 2009

Third Place

• Feature Story, awarded to Laura Miller, for "The Knox Fabric: Grew Up on the West Bank," published October 2009
  Critical Review other than Film, awarded to Dan Dyrda, for a music review published October 2009
  Headline Writing, awarded to the paper's staff, for "Cigarette Ban Ignites Controversy"

Honorable Mention

• Sports Design Page, to Matt Wheaton and Evan Temchin, for design of sports page published October 22, 2009
• Front Page Layout, to Laura Miller and Evan Temchin, for design of three issues published in October 2009
• Sports News Story, to Colin Davis, for "Tim Heimann Memorial," published April 2, 2009

Published since 1878, The Knox Student was founded by Samuel S. McClure. An 1882 Knox graduate, McClure later created McClure's Magazine, an influential early 20th-century newsmagazine that is widely acknowledged as the first American publication to focus on investigative journalism.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 47 states and 48 countries. Knox's "Old Main" is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.