The Ohio News Media Association recognized The Witmarsum with three awards Feb. 6 during the organization’s 2020 Ohio Collegiate Newspaper and Website Competition. It was the first time The Witmarsum submitted items for the collegiate competition and sent students to participate in the organization’s annual convention in Westerville.
The Wit placed first in the Best Multi-Media Package and Arts and Entertainment categories and second in the Best Website category. The award for the Arts and Entertainment category was for three pieces: “From Botswana to Bluffton: A mother and daughter share on experiences and education” by Hannah Conklin ’19, “Days after dropping off his cousin, Alvarez enrolled, too” by Nicole Centofanti and “Phil: Art, teaching and life” by Dakota Fredette ’19. The award for Best Multi-Media Package was also “Phil: Art, teaching and life.”
Colleges and universities in Ohio were divided into two divisions in The Collegiate Newspaper and Website Competition based on enrollment. The Witmarsum competed in Division B, which was for schools with an enrollment of 10,000 or less. Other schools in the division included Ashland University, Baldwin Wallace University, Capital University, Cedarville University, University of Findlay, John Carroll University, Ohio Northern University, Otterbein University and Xavier University.
As managing editor, I attended the convention with other Witmarsum staff members Program Director Kai Smith and videographers Olivia Tennefoss and Day’Vion Smith. Our faculty adviser, Marathana Prothro, and digital platform engineer, Dave Woodward, also attended.
It was important to me to attend the convention, not only because of the awards The Wit won, but also because I knew it would be an important learning opportunity as a person in a leadership position.
There were two sessions I felt where I learned ways to help grow and continue to improve The Witmarsum.
The session I felt most helpful was the Q and A section for collegiate news organizations to get advice for some of the problems they are facing and trying to work through.
It was fascinating to hear from the other students and what problems their media organizations were facing and how similar some of them were to The Wit.
“I think the most helpful thing was how they prioritize their copious amount of ideas flying through their brains,” said Kai Smith.
Through the lens of an editor, I thought the most helpful piece of information from this session was learning how an editor and journalist get on the same wavelength on a story. The answer to this was for the editor to ask their staff to state the point of the story in 25 words or less. This is something I am going to start using in my own meetings.
One of the sessions was hearing from a panel of reporters from Dayton, Ohio who reported on the Oregon District shooting on Aug. 4, 2019.
The panelists described where they were when they heard about the shooting, the challenges they faced while reporting the breaking news and how close the news-reporting community was.
During this session, I learned how important it is for a newsroom to work together at all times especially when tragedy strikes a community.
Tennefoss also thought the session was helpful.
“I learned that response time is really important and reporting on personal events like the shooting can be extremely difficult, but it’s important to push through and help bring the community back together by reporting the facts,” said Tennefoss.
