Four John Brown University students and Threefold Advocate faculty adviser attended the annual Arkansas College Media Association (ACMA) spring convention held on April 14 in Searcy, Arkansas. As part of the convention, ACMA recognizes the best of the state’s collegiate media output in an award ceremony. This year, nine JBU students and alumni won awards across multiple categories.
The convention, which took place at Harding University’s American Heritage Center, included special guest speakers from the industry, break-out sessions of specialized content and a lunch before the award ceremony. The theme of the sessions varied from sport journalism to podcast storytelling tips to ethics in the newsroom.
For the contest, ACMA recognizes students that are involved in not only print journalism, like newspapers, magazines, and yearbooks but also broadcast stations, websites, social media, and podcasts. JBU entered for competition multiple Threefold Advocate articles, a communication magazine and visual graphics.
Among the prizes, JBU took home, from the General Excellence category, the award for Magazine of the Year, thanks to the work of seniors James Gilbert and Zoe Ross and sophomore Yamil Tenorio on the magazine “Comm: A legacy” for their magazine writing class last spring. Ross also won second and third place for Online Meeting/ Speech and Online Election/ Political Coverage, respectively.
Sophomore Ari Yam swept the Online Art & Illustration category, winning first, second, and third place for its graphics for the Threefold Advocate back pages. This was especially exciting for Yam since it was his first conference and first year with the Threefold. “I panicked and was nervous because I had to stand up and receive the certificate, but I had things on me that took time away from me at the time. In the end I was grateful to the judges who in their comments I noticed that I did get to convey what I wanted to with the Threefold Advocate back pages” Yam said.
Threefold Advocate staff members, seniors Ben Martin, Gabriela Arosemena and alumni Orry Phillips were recognized by the College Association for articles published in the newspaper. Martin won second place in the Online Editorials/Commentary category. Arosemena won second place for the Online Sport Writing category for the article “After strong start, JBU soccer’s undefeated conference run ends vs. Science & Arts”, and Philips won honorary mention also for the Online Sport Writing category. Freshman Hannah Davis also won an honorable mention in the Opinions/Commentary category. Her opinions submission for the contest, “Abortion and the Value of Life”, was Davis first article published in the Threefold.
Following the conference, faculty adviser for the Threefold Advocate, Melissa Varner, shared she was very proud of the student’s work this year. “Despite having a smaller staff and several new reporters and editors, they succeeded in creating many quality articles and graphics. I’m glad they received recognition at ACMA, and I expect even more awards next year,” Varner said.