MDC’s award-winning newspaper The Reporter has been named the top college student newspaper in Florida for the ninth year in a row at the recent Florida College System Publications Association (FCSPA) conference and awards banquet in Tampa.
The biweekly’s staff placed in 16 of 19 individual categories including nine first-place awards. The competition was based on newspapers printed during the 2018-19 school year. The Reporter accumulated 37 overall points.
Aside from placing first overall in general excellence, the newspaper was awarded individual top honors for News Story, In-Depth Reporting, Feature Story, Sports Writing, Sports Column, General Column, Website, Illustration, and Headlines. In addition, Christian Ortega won an inner circle award for placing top three in six different categories.
“I’m glad I was able to uphold the Reporter’s streak of success at the award ceremony,” said Christian Ortega, who served as editor-in-chief of The Reporter during the 2018-19 school year. “This is a testament to the hard work everybody on my staff put in last year.”
The Reporter features 16 pages, prints on a biweekly schedule, has a circulation of 10,250 per print cycle and is supplemented by a website with video and audio content. It is distributed at all eight MDC campuses and has newsrooms at the North, Wolfson and Kendall campuses. In the past nine years, the paper has won 133 awards from the FCSPA including 77 first-place honors.
Below is a list of the individual awards received by The Reporter:
THE REPORTER:
FIRST PLACE:
Christian Ortega, News Story
Corbin Bolies, In-Depth Reporting
Christian Ortega, Feature Story
Teresa Schuster, General Column
Christian Ortega, Sports Column
Aminah Brown, Illustration
Christian Ortega, Sports Writing
Reporter Staff, Website
Reporter Staff, Headlines
SECOND PLACE:
Christian Ortega, News Photos
Reporter Staff, Newspaper Design
Feature Photo, Elizabeth Garcia
THIRD PLACE:
Reporter Staff, Editorial
Christian Ortega, Sports Photo
Alexander Ontiveros, Comic Strip
Teresa Schuster, Humor Column
For more information, contact The Reporter’s advisor Manolo Barco at 305-237-1255, mbarco@mdc.edu.