LeeAnn Lambert, advisor to BYU-Hawaii’s student newspaper, Ke Alaka’i, admits she was amazed when the publication won a 2007 Associated Collegiate Press Online Pacemaker Award during the organization’s recent national conference in Washington D.C.
The Associated Collegiate Press organization was founded in 1921 to help student journalists, and includes over 20,000 college student news media staff. The ACP web site describes its Pacemaker Awards, which started in 1927, as “college journalism’s most prestigious and oldest prize for general excellence.”
"It's particularly great that we won the award because we don't have a journalism or broadcast program here, and we competed with a lot of big schools that do," said Lambert, who along with two students currently on the Ke Alaka’i staff — Lianna Quillen, a junior EXS major from Hercules, California; and Ee Wen “Sharon” Ting, a senior English major from Malaysia — attended the annual conference with about 3,000 other people from across the U.S.
Prior to receiving the award, Lambert said she thought the ACP was just evaluating the Ke Alaka'i web site, so she was surprised when BYUH was listed among 31 finalists. “I was even more surprised when they announced BYU-Hawaii as one of the eight national winners. It’s like winning the national championship for this medium.” Other online winners this year included San Francisco State, George Washington, Wake Forest and the University of Kansas.
“Even though we don’t have a journalism major, the students are fantastic,” Lambert said. “We were evaluated during the BYUHSA elections situation we had last [school] year, and they did a great job: They did video and daily stories, and got reaction from the community. It was really a great opportunity for them to show what they could do. We covered it from different angles, from multimedia to the newspaper.”
"Another thing I think sets us apart is that we localize a lot of international stories, since we have an international student body," Lambert continued. She also pointed out about 30 students usually work on Ke Alaka’i staff, with some turnover each semester, and noted that Quillen was among those who contributed to the prize-winning coverage. “We have students who work on the web, video, graphics, copy editors and we hire as many writers as we can afford,” she said, adding that about 15 of the students who worked on the publication during the evaluation have since graduated, and three more have gone on Latter-day Saint missions.
Others who worked on the series include Jonathan Marler, a junior English major from Laie, who wrote most of the stories; and Batorgil “Orgil” Batjargal, a senior computer science major from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, graduating in December, who was the webmaster. “He’s the one who learned how to use our content management system and put it together,” she added. “A lot of the credit goes to him.” Both are still on the Ke Alaka’i staff.
Quillen, the publication's current editor-in-chief, credited other Ke Alaka'i team members for their coverage of last Spring’s elections, which generated lots of interest: “There would always be huge groups of people listening to what was going on. There were a lot of people reading the stories and watching the podcasts,” she said.
“We probably won the award because we had a lot of viewers, and our reporters got a lot of really good reactions. We think our podcasts and the comments blog also helped. It showed that our web site was something that’s viable for the future.”
Quillen also said going to the ACP conference was a valuable experience. “There were so many different people with expertise in so many different journalism areas. I learned so much.”
Batjargal recalls he completed the publication’s revised web site based on a Joomla™ content management system shortly before the election process started. “This was my first exposure to a content management system. I had to learn it for myself, then customize it for Ke Alaka'i. Albert Candari, who used to be on the BYUH Web Team, was my advisor for creating the site.”
He added it took him about one month to put the site together. “Today, all the writers upload their stories to the system, so it’s ideal for the webmaster. I also made video tutorials on how to use Joomla™ for my co-workers. They’re used for training the new Ke Alaka'i workers."
Batjargal also said he “didn’t expect the award, but it’s very good for me as something to show as an accomplishment.”
“Everything these students learn to do is totally transferable,” Lambert said. “Many students need to know how to write and do multimedia, so all of the things we do here really helps prepare them with skills and abilities. We only publish every other week, but Ke Alaka’i gives them real-life experiences with what’s in the media today. These skills transfer over to all the different majors. They all need to know how to do multimedia — it’s part of doing business, it’s part of doing everything. I can’t imagine us sending students out without multimedia experience.”