Awards recognize outstanding journalists

ARELIS HERNANDEZ / The Working Press
During the Mark of Excellence Awards Luncheon Friday, students and educators were recognized for journalism in print, broadcast and online. Four awards honored those who went beyond the classroom to protect the First Amendment and ensure a future for journalism.
Kathleen Wickham, a journalism professor at the University of Mississippi, won the David L. Eshelman Outstanding Campus Adviser Award for leading her campus chapter to excellence awards for more than three years. Wickham said she shares the award with her students, including senior Alex McDaniel, who is attending the convention this year as a birthday gift from her
parents.
When Elvia Malagon was told she could not do her job, she stood firm. During a public speech by President George Bush’s former deputy national security adviser, Meghan O’Sullivan, Malagon arrived with pen and notebook as a reporter for the Indiana Daily Student but she was told it was “off the record.” Her refusal to leave led to the canceling of the event and won her the Robert D.G. Lewis First Amendment Award.
Indiana University at Bloomington is the winner of this year’s National Campus Chapter of the Year Award after increasing its membership, holding a spring chapter conference and helping draft state legislation that would increase legal protections for high school and college press advisers. The measure was named Dave’s Law, in honor of the chapter’s late adviser David L.?Adams.
For about 18 years, Lydia Chavez has been teaching young journalists at the University of California at Berkeley. Students praise Chavez for her encouragement in teaching story craft. Her student, David Gelles, landed on the front page of The New York Times just five weeks into Chavez’s journalism “boot camp” class. Chavez received the Distinguished Teaching in Journalism award.