Awards

The Society of Newspaper Design has recognized another News21 project with a quarterly award in multimedia design that now qualifies for top honors in the SNDies national contest, to be judged with earlier News21 winners in August.

Arizona State University’s student project on Latinos in the military called “Fighting Battles” was described by a judge as “a thoughtful and deep look” into the connection of six individuals to the military, ranging from soldier and veteran to activist and a grieving father. Also appealing to the judges was the Flash video introduction and motion graphics that convey the struggles Latinos have in overcoming discrimination at home and in the ranks.

Multimedia reporters Chris Cameron and Chrystall Kanyuck and pursued the story while a Carnegie-Knight News21 fellow as graduate students at Arizona State University. Cameron is now a technology writer for readwriteweb.com while Kanyuck finishes her master’s degree at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in May. Their project is explained in depth in a posting on News21’s innovation blog.

Last autumn, the News21 team at the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication received seven SNDies, and each project also qualifies for national honors.
* The overall Powering a Nation site, is described as “a broad introduction to a large project that quickly makes clear the significance of being aware of our power usage. The video is typographically beautiful, simple and elegant.”
* Roping the Wind, by UNC students Nacho Corbella and Monica Ulmanu and visiting University of Missouri fellow Jenn Hueting, which uses “highly stylized video vignettes that accompany a compelling … tale of how a small town in Texas is making a comeback due to the wind energy industry.”
* Climate Refugees, by visiting Harvard fellow Anna York and UNC graduate student Phil Daquilla, tells the story about an Alaska village losing its land, presented in a way that “was chilling, and really created a sense of urgency around the problem in Newtok, as well as documenting the challenges they face in arriving at a solution.” The project is explained in depth here.
* Down the Line: The Grid, by Eileen Mignoni, Ashley Zammitt, Courtney Woo and Ulmanu, explains the nation’s overburdened power system and used “powerful” typography and “an appropriately ominous atmosphere.”
* Energy Portraits, by Corbello and Heuting. Said a judge: ”This exploration of several families’ electric usage is eye-opening and makes the subject relatable.”
* The High Energy Diet, by Meilssa Moyer and Zammitt, illustrates issues in the nation’s food supply chain. “Using a video treatment for this particular subject is a smart move, as it makes the situation that much more concrete: a human voice, paired with images of farmer’s markets, food labels, and folks biting into pizza slices, has a much greater impact than simply reading about the impact of our food choices.”
* Reclaiming Creation by Woo, Mignoni and Ulmanu, is about the evangelical conversation movement.

News21 is part of the Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.