Harbinger Student Media Wins Six Awards At Journalism Conference
Harbinger Student Media has won six awards for its work at the annual statewide Illinois Community College Journalism Association competition. The awards were announced last week at a conference hosted by Eastern Illinois University.
These include one second-place, two third-place, and three honorable mention awards.
The biggest winner at HSM is former student Stephanie McClaskey, who won second place in the Podcast category, and honorable mentions in the News Photo and Reporter of the Year categories. She has previously won two first-place awards in the Podcast category in 2021 and 2022 for her mental health podcast Self-Care Tips&Tools Podcast.
“Following the pandemic, I felt a huge calling to bring awareness of mental health and self-care. When I created the Self-Care Tips&Tools Podcast, I wasn’t really expecting it to bring me to this place where it has made me an award-winning producer,” said McClaskey, after HSM reached out to her through LinkedIn.
Additionally, current HSM staff Brennan Tuma won third place in the Front Page Design category, and Noah Markunas won an honorable mention in the Sports Photos category. Former HSM writer William Spencer won an honorable mention for News Story of the Year.
One of the awards not won by HSM, but still is very much connected to ICC, is the highest honor at the conference, the Mike Foster General Excellence Award.
It is named after Professor Michael Foster, a professor at ICC who died recently on April 12, 2023. He was integral to the formation of the ICCJA and also led HSM for many years.
The conference did not just involve awards, however. It was a two-day event full of workshops and lectures from accomplished journalists, as well as tours of the campus.
The keynote speaker was Dave McKinney, a state politics reporter at Chicago news station WBEZ and longtime statehouse bureau chief in Springfield for the Chicago Sun-Times. He discussed his work in the journalism field and the opportunities his profession has given him. For example, he has interviewed former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and former United States president Barack Obama, the latter of whom McKinney met when he was only an Illinois state senator.
Other speakers included Greg Bilbrey, Tim Drachilis, Jeff Owens, Greg Cooper, Ensung Kim, Will Simmons, Josh Norman, David Porter, Zaria Flippin, Jenna Minor, Kelly Goodwin, Joe Astrouski, Rob Le Cates, Cam’ron Hardy, Joe Gisondi, and Diego Aparicio.
These speakers come from many backgrounds, including student newspaper advisors, journalism professors, WEIU broadcasters, and even EIU students.
HSM staff, as well as staff from other community college newspapers, learned about a great variety of topics from interviewing to podcasting to legal issues in journalism.
Another important part of the conference was the tour of WEIU, the local TV station, located on the EIU campus. Eastern Illinois is sparsely populated with few news outlets, and the university provides the main source of news in the region.
HSM was given the opportunity to attend WEIU’s live 5:30 news. Students observed both the filming and behind-the-scenes work. It served as a valuable learning experience for HSM students.
“The WEIU newscast opened my eyes on how to more professionally run a news shoot. The preparation went down to the second they started to record, and it simply re-sparked my passion in being in the communications field,” said Sy Ingersoll, Harbinger Weekly producer.
Also at the conference, Harbinger Student Media Media Manager and ICC Mass Communication and Communication Professor Debbie Hedemann was elected secretary of the board of ICCJA. ICC Journalism Professor Bill Poorman, advisor for HSM, has also been elected second vice president of ICCJA.
The ICCJA conference is annual, and the next one will occur next fall, Thursday, November 14 – Friday, November 15.
Way to go ICC Students/HSM!