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| This year's flag of the Mount Mercy Times, designed by student Jenna Welty |
As I noted on one of my other blogs, the Iowa College Media Association held its annual convention Feb. 8. On that blog post, I wrote about convention speakers and an award that I was honored to receive.
But what about the Mount Mercy Times? Well, the student “newspaper” at Mount Mercy University did well, earning six awards including four first-place honors. That’s the good news. The less good news is I’m struggling to see how we win as many in next year’s contest.
This is the first year that the Times has switched to an all-on-line news source. So far, it has not gone as well and I would hoped. I hate that we’re over halfway through the academic year and we don’t seem to be producing all of the stories we should be nor promoting our content enough. Why? I suppose you should probably ask the faculty advisor.
It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem it’s me.
Well, that’s not 100% true, but it’s 90% the case. Student media succeeds when students care about it enough, and, without a newspaper to produce, students have allowed The Times to become too much of an afterthought. My challenge is the ongoing one that is the most important to me: How do I inspire students to unleash their inner journalists?
If you know how to do that, please let me know. Honestly, I don’t think there is a simple answer, and I don’t expect one.
Anyway, enough griping. Let me spend a little time celebrating, too.
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| Image of winning profile. Image is link to document where you can see all MMU Times winners, or click here. |
The Times has a kind of story called a “snapshot,” which is a personality profile accompanied by at least one good image of the subjects, sometimes several images with the main one being a good profile picture. And Catherine Kratoska, a staff writer, was recognized for the best profile story in the recent 2023 contest for a story about Robin Clark-Bridges, a now-retired MMU librarian who created and tends two gardens at the entrance to the library.
I think it helps that Annie Barkalow, a talented student journalist at the time, made the images that go with the story. Good pictures help sell good personality stories.
And I take a little pride, too, in that the profile, while a kind of story the Times did on a regular basis, was also a direct result of a class assignment. In Introduction to Journalism, I have students do an interview lab—that spring, Clark-Bridges agreed to come to class for a sort of news conference, a group interview, and Kratoska’s story was originally a lab and homework class assignment.
Another first-place award was for staff editorials. Over the years, the Times has had a history of strong editorial writing. A good staff editorial reflects a depth of opinion that goes beyond an emotional rant—it should be a thoughtful advocacy on some controversy of relevance to the audience.
In the contest, a student media outlet can submit three staff editorials. The three that the Times submitted are:
- What MMU needs is a 'freedom of expression' policy, Dec. 8, 2022.
- Questions of Justice: America, MMU still have work to do to combat system racism, Feb. 16, 2023.
- No more stolen sisters: Join the right to end violence towards Indigenous women, May 4, 2023.
I am particularly proud of the one on freedom of expression, a key issue at any university but a particular challenge at a private, Catholic university. It’s to MMU’s credit that, when the university did write its policy, it very much had the flavor that the students asked for—mostly, it’s a policy to protect, not quash, student expression.
And we won another first-place awards, too. The current editor of the Times, Delcie Sanache, is a sophomore nursing student who joined the Times staff last year as sports editor. As a freshman, she then took over when the previous editor had to step aside for personal reasons.
Photography hasn’t always been a strength of the Times, but Delcie made an image at a soccer game that judges said was the best sports photograph of the year.
Well, cool.
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| Delcie Senache's award-winner soccer image. |
And in fall, I wrote a blog post about how much I liked the Barbie movie, and a student in a writing class said she disagreed. I encouraged her to turn that disagreement into something, and she wrote her own review of Barbie.
It was, according to ICMA, the best review of the year. And it was strictly online—published this fall after the “paper’ had become a news web site. So, excellence in journalism and writing doesn’t depend on the dead trees, which is a good thought to keep hold of.
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| Screenshot of Barbie review. |
I’m hopeful that things can come together better for the Times this spring. Before Spring Break, I want us to be drawing more attention to good stories that students are executing well. We’ve produced some good stories this year, but again, not enough to have many contest entries for next year.
Well, contest entries aren’t the main point of college student media. The main point is that student journalism makes a difference at a college campus. In our culture at large, the decline in many local newspapers has led to “news deserts,” which means a key part of civic engagement, a voice that can make a difference in communities, is sadly lacking.
I don’t want that to happen at MMU. I may be near the end of my career, but I hope that the Times continues its mission to be an authentic student news media at Mount Mercy University.
