Arrow's election coverage garners national acclaim

The Arrow, Southeast Missouri State University's student newspaper, received a second place in the best-of-show category at the David K. Adams Awards contest at the College Media Association's spring national convention in New York City.

The Arrow's 2016 election coverage gained acclaim in the Best News Delivery category, which honors excellence in distributing information about an event and providing updates through social media.

"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, in a news release. "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 Arrow provided pre-election coverage of interest to college voters and updated coverage of the election through its website, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook, as well as election followup.

"I knew the planning that went into the election coverage, as well as the execution of the plan, was deserving of recognition," Buck said in the release. "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 attended the conference with Arrow content advisor and Southeast Missourian feature editor Logan Young and Arrow staff members Kara Hartnett (digital managing editor), Katelyn Mary Skaggs (news editor) and Darryeon Bishop (videographer).

Buck said the election coverage, both editorial and advertising, was done in collaboration with mass media instructor Mike Simmons in a joint project of MC429 "Media Management." Simmons supervised the advertising team's production of promotional content, while 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," Dr. Karie Hollerbach, chair of the Department of Mass Media, said in the press release. "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."