Dollars & Sense Wins National Journalism Awards from Columbia Scholastic Press Association and SABEW
Second Consecutive Win Rings Up a Total of 13 Gold Crown Awards for Student MagazineApril 5, 2019
For the second consecutive year, Baruch College’s student magazine Dollars & Sense earned the Gold Crown Award, the highest recognition conferred by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, which selects among more than 1,100 student-produced digital and print magazines, newspapers, and yearbooks.
This year marks the 13th Gold Crown Award for the magazine, which is written, edited, and published by students from the journalism department in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.
Aldemaro Romero, Jr., PhD, dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, commended the work done by the winning students, saying “Dollars and Sense represents a great example of one of the pillars of a liberal arts education approach: teaching by doing.”
“Outstanding Achievement”
Dollars & Sense won in the “Gold Digital General Magazine” category. According to Columbia Scholastic Press Association, this award is for “outstanding achievement in the writing, editing, design and production of a superlative student publication through the cooperative efforts of students, faculty and administrators which epitomizes the high ideals from which this Association has drawn its strength and inspiration.”
Trip to Maine: “Experience of a Lifetime”
A second award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) singled out a package of multimedia stories that students produced as part of a political reporting class taught in spring 2018 in advance of the midterm elections. During last year’s spring break, the class traveled to Maine for eight days where they worked 10 to 14 hours each day, traveling and conducting on-the-ground reporting throughout the 2nd Congressional District, a rural swing district that voted twice to elect Barack Obama and then Donald Trump.
Go to “Maine Voters & the Midterm” for the prize-winning coverage, which includes articles, interviews, a podcast “Remembering Better Days,” video and photos.
Victoria Merlino (’19), B.A. in journalism, was one of the students who participated in the Maine trip and called it an “experience of a lifetime.”
“Not only was I able to learn journalism skills that I will take with me into my career,” said Merlino, “but I also was able to make lasting memories with my interview subjects, friends and professors that I will cherish forever.”
Second Award for Coverage
Dollars and Sense won the SABEW award in the “Student Journalism; Projects and Collaborations” category.
SABEW, the nation’s largest group of business journalists, praised Baruch students’ reporting on the business and economic challenges in Millinocket, a small rural town in Maine, after the closing of the paper mills that had sustained it for decades. SABEW judges said the Dollars & Sense coverage was “well written and had some interesting graphic elements that gave local color to the reporting — you feel like you are walking the streets yourself.”
“These awards recognize the effort students put into Dollars & Sense, which showcases the best work students do in classes, as well as original story ideas that they research and report in addition to their regular commitments, which also often include part-time jobs,” said Dollars & Sense faculty advisors Andrea Gabor and Vera Haller in an email interview.
In 2015, the magazine’s coverage of entrepreneurism in Cuba won SABEW’s top award for student journalism.
Published Stories to Professional Portfolios
“Dollars & Sense is an opportunity for students to take original ideas or work they did for a class and turn them into publishable articles,” explained Professors Gabor and Haller. “It also allows students to build a professional quality portfolio that will support applications for internships, jobs and graduate schools. In addition, the magazine draws students from a variety of majors, and is a unique opportunity to meet a wide variety of students outside of their regular classes.”
Read the latest Dollars & Sense stories here.
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