Knight Center students and projects won five Mark of Excellence awards at the Society of Professional Journalists Region 4 spring conference.
The students won awards for a diverse set of projects. The Knight Center’s investigative environmental reporting class produced a series of investigative reports on innovative brownfield developments that took third place in online in-depth reporting. Knight Center graduate assistants took first place in online opinion and commentary with an experiment in online reader engagement that asked visitors to place invasive species and “tournament brackets.”
Knight Center winners include:
Online in-depth reporting
3rd place: E. Pacheco B. McGaughey A. O’Dell, C. Morra, J. Spiro and
B. Bienkowski
Online opinion and commentary
1st place: Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason for Great Lakes Smackdown
Best independent online student publication
2nd place: Great Lakes Echo

Radio news reporting
3rd place: Alice Rossignol

Non-fiction magazine article
3rd place: Brian Bienkowski