LSC’s Electronic Journalism Arts Department has one a major national award for its NewsLINC website.
NewsLINC placed third in the 2011 Broadcast Education Association’s Student Interactive Multimedia competition, said Associate EJA Professor Meaghan Meachem. The Cronkite School at Arizona State University placed first, and Elon University finished second. NewsLINC came in second in this competition last year.
Meachem stressed the difference between LSC and the other schools it competed against. LSC’s team was the only team of undergraduate students in the competition, Meachem said. She added that the other teams entered projects that they had worked for most of a term on, whereas the News LINC team works on deadline and updates the site twice daily. NewsLINC was the only news website in the competition.
Senior EJA major Tim Cappalli also said he is excited about the award, particularly because the LSC team competed solely against teams of graduate students. He added that he hopes the Broadcast Education Association adds a news-only category to its competition, and he said he believes LSC would do well in such a category.
“We’re very proud of our students,” said Darlene Ballou, director of broadcast operations and an adjunct faculty member in the EJA Department.
Ballou said that EJA students work on NewsLINC as part of a two-semester practicum. In the first semester, students work mainly on providing content for the site. Students move into producing and editing roles the next semester and also work on the site’s layout.
Ballou also said that NewsLINC is an important resource for community journalism in the southern part of the Northeast Kingdom. NewsLINC is one of three community news sources offered by LSC. The others are News7, a television newscast, and NewsINK, a magazine. Ballou added that, outside of LSC, the only news source in this part of the NEK is the Caledonian-Record.
Though NewsLINC has a local focus, it can be accessed worldwide through the Internet. The site gets 60 to 100 hits daily from around the country and world, Ballou said.
NewsLINC was created in February 2009 with help of a grant from AT&T. Meachem said that grant was instrumental in NewsLINC’s creation.
“Without them (AT&T), NewsLINC would not be,” Meachem said.
The awards session for the Student Interactive Multimedia competition will be held Sunday, April 10, in Las Vegas.