[College Media Matters] Over the past year, The Daily Collegian produced startlingly good journalism. Staffers at Penn State University’s 125-year-old independent student newspaper rose to the challenge of reporting upon a multi-headed, complex, feral, real-time beast of a news story that continues to scrape and claw for attention.
Amid a massive scandal that has eaten PSU alive– leaving it temporarily branded Unhappy Valley in the eyes of many– one bright spot has been the Collegian. Online, in print, in the newsroom, and in the field, the DC team has exuded “old-fashioned hustle,” repeatedly distinguishing itself in small but powerful ways from the professional media horde.
For its bold, fair, accurate, nonstop, comprehensive, and oft-innovative coverage of all-things Sandusky and beyond, The Daily Collegian is my selection as the top college newspaper of the past academic year. Its two tiers of excellence, in my opinion: producing quality work and simply surviving a story that prior to fall semester’s start no one but Pennsylvania’s state attorney general could have imagined unfolding.
As editors wrote in late April in a goodbye editorial of sorts, headlined “Penn State, Thank You for Reading,” “In an academic year where the light at the end of the tunnel sometimes seemed forever out of reach, here we are. When we descended on campus last August, few of us could have predicted the roller coaster of emotions that would be in store. Though there’s still much left to resolve, there’s some comfort in knowing we made it this far.”
Read the rest HERE.
Well deserved honor. They did an amazing job covering all that’s happened at Penn State this year.
Tip your hat when its due.
