March 6, 2009 — Print journalism may be on the wane, but that hasn't kept University of the Virgin Islands’ students from writing award-winning journalism.
In only its third year of its existence, UVI’s campus paper, UVI Voice, has won national awards for the third consecutive year at the national Historically Black Colleges and Universities student newspaper conference.
UVI students took second-place awards in News Coverage and Spot News in direct competition with HBCU student newspapers from all over the U.S.
"These students engaged in stories that actually made a difference at the university," Robin Sterns, UVI Voice adviser through spring 2008, said. "I think the first time you write a piece of journalism that makes a difference, you realize the power of it," she said.
For example, Aslin Leger’s News Coverage award-winning story "Students Frustrated with Education Degrees" was about a program that faculty had left, courses cancelled, and many students left unable to move forward to graduation. The story illustrated student problems with faculty and scheduling.
"Just to have one of the students e-mail me and thank me was definitely the greatest reward I could get, because I had shed some light on her story," Leger, former St. Thomas campus Managing Editor said. "None of the stories I wrote were ever my own. They were my peer's stories. I just covered them," she said.
The other second-place award was given to the UVI Voice as a whole for Spot News, meaning a news story that had to be reported and written within a 24-hour publishing deadline.
UVI Voice has come a long way from its predecessor, St. Croix Sentinel. Sterns said that when she arrived at UVI it was a St. Croix-only publication printed only two times a semester.
Now, the staff and coverage has grown to both campuses, workshops are held via videoconference and the paper has also won five awards at the same conference in 2008, and two in 2007.
"It’s certainly encouraged the junior and senior students who are very focused because there are some serious issues ahead," Gillian Royes, current UVI Voice advisor, said. "Because of budgetary considerations we are having to cut back the newspaper."
Royes said the future of the publication is moving online to www.uvivoice.com.
"It’s a new era for journalism," Royes said. "The times are changing. Yes, it’s going more online, you have to prepare for that. But the world is really their oyster."
The 11th annual National HBCU Student News Media Conference and Job Fair was held Feb. 12-14, at North Carolina Central University, in Durham. This year's awards were for content that ran in calendar year 2008. The conference is sponsored each year by the Black College Communication Association, of which UVI is a charter member.
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