An award from the US-based Society of Professional Journalists makes The University Times the best all-around non-daily student newspaper in the world.
Editor Sinéad Baker, former Editor Edmund Heaphy and Deputy Editor Dominic McGrath were cited for the award in the Mark of Excellence awards, which includes both US and international entrants. The 12 finalists for the award were the winners of the society’s 12 regional conferences, announced in April, including the Arizona Daily Wildcat from the University of Arizona and the Loyola Maroon from Loyola University.
The win will be acknowledged at the Excellence in Journalism 2017 conference in California in September.
Issues submitted as part of the award include two edited by Baker, the current Editor, and one edited by Heaphy, who served as editor for the 2015/16 academic year.
This award follows previous honours, including Publication of the Year and Journalist of the Year at the 2017 Student Achievement Awards. The paper has also won multiple awards from the US-based Society for News Design, who found the paper to be both the best-designed student newspaper in the world in 2016 and to have the best-designed student newspaper website in 2016 and 2017. Heaphy was also awarded international college designer of the year in 2016.
Also in this year’s Mark of Excellence awards, Baker, as a regional winner for feature writing, was shortlisted as one of the top 12 student journalists for feature writing in colleges with more than 10,000 students.
Last year, The Editorial Board of The University Times was shortlisted in the same Mark of Excellence Awards.
The awards honour the best in collegiate journalism. Judged at an international level, the annual competition awards students for a number of categories across newspapers, magazines and online journalism.
Founded in 1907, the Society of Professional Journalists is one of the oldest organisations representing journalists in the world. In the US alone, they have almost 300 chapters and more than 9,000 members of the media.
