College of Communications students win awards at regional journalism conference

Feb. 25, 2009 -- John Steele, a radio-television major at Arkansas State University, was chosen Best of the South 2008 Radio Journalist of the Year by the Southeastern Journalism Conference (SEJC), Feb. 12-14 in Nashville, Tenn.

Senior journalism major Sarah Morris placed third at SEJC in the Best of the South 2008 Journalist of the Year competition at the same conference. Herald adviser Bonnie Thrasher, who serves as secretary-treasurer of SEJC, accompanied the students to Nashville.

Other radio-television majors have earned awards from the Broadcast Education Association (BEA). Students in the R-TV class in reporting for the electronic media took third in the BEA's Media Festival. R-TV professor Dr. Mary Jackson-Pitts taught the class.

The BEA announcement of the award said, "Congratulations to you and your institution on winning the third place award. The News Division had a record number of entries this year. Professionals from across the country judged the entries. If you made our list of top three in any of our 11 categories, you are truly among the best in the nation."

The radio news podcasts can be found at http://comm.astate.edu/~remclass/. R-TV student projects are at http://comm.astate.edu/~remclass/.  Students who produced the winning podcasts were Daisy Juarez, Anna Callaway, Dustin Sullivan, Robin Neal, Miranda Emery, Katelyn Brown, Denáe Strong, Ashley Knight and John Steele.

Another R-TV student, Hunter West, was chosen in the top 10 percent of the BEA video contest. Judges’ comments included words and phrases like "professional" and "very well done." Collin Pillow was the supervising faculty member.  

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