csceagle.com wins top prize for 2nd straight year

For the second straight year, The Eagle’s website, csceagle.com, captured first in  “Excellence in Digital Medium,” the top award in the digital medium competition of the Nebraska Collegiate Media Association’s Gold Leaf Awards, presented April 16, 2016, at the association’s annual conference hosted this year at Doane College, Crete.

This is the third time in four years csceagle.com took top honors in the Digital Medium Division. It finished first in 2013 and second in 2014.

The website’s win, coupled with The Eagle’s sixth straight “Best in Overall Excellence” title in the Newspaper Division, placed the staff earning top spots in two of the NCMA’s four media division competitions.

“This year we were more concerned when submitting entries for digital medium as Hannah Clark, our former web editor, had taken care of this task in years past,” said The Eagle’s Managing Editor Jordyn Hulinsky, junior of St. Paul.

“I was shocked we won this division because I felt we were lacking in the online side of things,” she said. “But, we earned high praise for our use of different platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, along with csceagle.com, during our coverage of The Big Event and different sporting events.

“Again, like the paper, this success was the result of the whole staff working together to serve our audience,” Hulinsky said.

The digital medium competition is broken into 12 individual categories from breaking news stories to use of a digital medium for public service, to emerging platforms, to community collaboration.

Eligible entries must have been posted between March 1, 2015, and Feb. 29, 2016.

Students from the NCMA’s seven member schools who competed earned points for their respective websites for placing first (5 points), second (3 points), or third (1 point) in each of those 12 categories. Honorable mentions do not earn points. The points each student earns are totaled to determine which website earns the “Excellence in Digital Medium” title.

“I cannot say enough about the quality of work and the dedication of the student staff of The Eagle and csceagle.com,” said Michael D. Kennedy, journalism instructor and adviser of The Eagle and csceagle.com. “I know how hard these students work and it has paid off for them.

“Winning two of NCMA’s four division titles confirms for everyone on campus and in the larger Chadron community, what I already know about these young people – they are dedicated, hard-working, young students who possess a strong commitment to providing the best news product they can for their audience,” he said.