UW-Milwaukee Student Journalists Win 14 State Journalism Awards

Media Milwaukee student journalists from UW-Milwaukee won 14 prestigious statewide awards from the Wisconsin College Media Association, including five first place honors.

Among those journalism awards: The Media Milwaukee news site, which is produced by students working in courses taught by instructors in the Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies Department at UWM, won second place General Web Excellence honors.

In addition, student journalists with JAMS 320 class were recognized through a letter from the governor and Wisconsin Newspaper Association presentation at the awards contest for their work in finding the photos of Wisconsin service members who died in Vietnam. The photos were included in a display at the WNA’s annual conference in Middleton.

The student journalists won awards in categories that included investigative reporting, freedom of information, sports column, still photography and feature writing.

The awards were produced in student news reporting classes taught by Jessica McBride and Jessie Garcia Marble. The first place honors included general news reporting by the JAMS 500 reporting class for a series of stories chronicling Milwaukee-area Holocaust survivors, and a photo by student Dan Zielinski for that project. First place honors also went to a team of student journalists in JAMS 320 class for their efforts in covering the tumult in the UWM Athletics Department, and a freedom of information award to student Paul Willems for his story seeking blacked-out emails relating to that controversy. Rounding out the first-place honors was a sports column by Cole Stevenson written in JAMS broadcast instructor Jessie Garcia Marble’s class.

The Wisconsin College Media Association (WCMA), an offshoot of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation (WNAF), was founded  to “foster and support student media at Wisconsin colleges, universities and technical schools,” according to its Facebook page. The awards contest is a statewide competition of Wisconsin university newspapers.

Here are the student award winners:

First place

Media Milwaukee, First Place, Photography, Surviving Hate, Preaching Love, Dan Zielinski

Media Milwaukee, First Place, Sports Reporting, UWM Athletic Department Controversies, Paul Willems, Tisia Muzinga, Rebecca Papenthien, Miela Fetaw, Kris  Schimmel

Media Milwaukee, First Place, Sports Column, NFL: Nothing’s Free League, Cole Stevenson

Media Milwaukee, First Place, General Reporting, On Humanity’s Edge, JAMS 500, Reporting Class (Jonathan Powell, Shana Wilson, Daniel Zielinski, Amanda Porter, Dylan Deprey, Tyler Nelson, Mary Jo Contino, Bo Bayerl, William Bott, Shannon Kirsch, Stevan Stojanovic, Amanda Melkonian, Amber Bak, Ellie Malone, Sarah DeGeorge, Mike Holloway, Graham Kilmer.)

Media Milwaukee, First Place, Freedom of Information, UWM Athletic Department Blacks Out Emails, Paul Willems

Second place

Media Milwaukee, Second Place, Sports Column, The Scarlet Letter C, Jonathan Powell

Media Milwaukee, Second Place, Freedom of Information, Wisconsin Open Records Complaint Tracking, Stevan Stojanovic

Media Milwaukee, Second Place, General Web Excellence, Media Milwaukee, JAMS students

Media Milwaukee, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, Unregulated Risk, Amanda Melkonian, Amber Bak, Shannon Kirsch, Ellie Malone

Media Milwaukee, Second Place, Feature Writing, The Ageless Man, Jonathan Powell

Third place

Media Milwaukee, Third Place, General Reporting, UW Budget, Jaimie Anderson, BM, Xing Qi, Somer Servais

Media Milwaukee, Third Place, Investigative Reporting, Inside Milwaukee Gun Court, Emily Zantow, Pakou Lee, Rebecca Papenthien

Media Milwaukee, Third Place, Feature Writing, Message of Hope, Dylan Deprey, Tyler Nelson

Honorable mention

Media Milwaukee,Honorable Mention, Feature Writing, Milwaukee Veterans are Soothed With Strums, Elizabeth LaPointe