CCNY'S INDEPENDENT
STUDENT NEWSPAPER
MAY 2000 VOLUME
2, NUMBER 5
Messenger May 2000 Table of Contents | Messenger Home
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CCNY'S INDEPENDENT
STUDENT NEWSPAPER |
The Messenger Wins Big!
by John Olafson
The winners of the fourth annual Campus Alternative Journalism Awards have been announced, and CCNY’s The Messenger figures prominently amongst the winners. The awards are given out every year by the Center for Campus Organizing based in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Messenger won Best Campus Alternative Publication of the Year (budget
under $10,000)—one of the two top awards in the competition. The awards
committee had the following to say about the publication:
Proclaiming itself the newspaper of the “University of Harlem” in its front
banner, The Messenger’s grounding in real, local social justice struggles
which blur the division between the campus and its surrounding community, won
marks for excellence all around. “The Messenger is at the center of a struggle
to halt the dismantling of true access to public higher education in New York,”
wrote Abby Scher. “The Messenger covers that struggle well, and connects it
with other community struggles in NYC.”
The Messenger also won an honorable mention in the category of Best Overall Reporting.
Rob Wallace, a member of The Messenger staff, says of the award: “The Messenger exemplifies the power of the people, to the shame of the CCNY administration, which shut down The Messenger and denied it funding, computers, a room, and supplies. We’ve been able to put out a nationally recognized publication, and we’ve done so because of the help provided by our campus and community. The award shows that with few material resources people can successfully organize in the face of repression.”
The Campus Alternative Journalism Awards were created to encourage alternative journalism on campus and recognize the contribution of student journalists to free thought in their campuses and communities. Each contestant has an explicit commitment to political and economic democracy, gender equality, anti-racism and multiculturalism, and the environment. Each publication is published by students, for a student or youth community.
The judges included John Anner of the Independent Press Association, Jeff Chang of ColorLines magazine and 360HipHop.com, former Campus Alternative Journalism Project director Sonya Huber, Cathy Madison of the Utne Reader, and Abby Scher of Dollars and Sense magazine.
Awards are given for Best Campus Alternative Publication of the Year in Category A (budget over $10,000) and Category B (under $10,000), as well as for Reporting, Sense of Humor, Anti-Racist Reporting, Anti-Sexist Reporting, Opinion Writing, Hellraising, and Design. In addition, this year the awards recognized papers that had done an extraordinary of covering the historic anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. Prizes for all winning papers will be provided by Common Courage Press and the Independent Press Association.
“This just goes to show that the best journalism comes from committed journalists,” notes Larry Hanley, The Messenger’s faculty advisor. “Publishing the facts is related to the political desire to know the truth.”