LLCC Lamp student newspaper wins statewide awards

The Lamp student newspaper at LLCC won 14 awards, including three first-place honors, at the Illinois Community College Journalism Association annual conference April 8 at Eastern Illinois University.

Sara Mullen of Nokomis won first place for feature writing and third place for headline writing.

Addison Keeley of Springfield won first place for news column and third place for sports column, page design and reporter of the year.

Emily Leers of Taylorville won first place for news photo.

Evan Langellier of Virden won second place for news story.

Maddy Wycoff of Springfield won third place for feature writing.

Honorable-mention awards went to Chris Koorzen of Loami for headline writing and Kalei Ramirez of Springfield for news photo.

The Lamp staff won third place for best student media, which is calculated based on the awards won in the contest, and the Mike Foster General Excellence award, which recognizes overall quality of print and online publications. The staff also received an honorable mention for news story of the year.

The Lamp is published in print and online at thelamponline.com.

04.12.21

LLCC student newspaper wins 19 awards at statewide competition

The Lamp student newspaper at LLCC won 19 awards, including seven first-place awards, for journalism excellence at the Illinois Community College Journalism Association’s spring conference held virtually April 8.

The Lamp staff, led by Editor Richard Bailey of Springfield, won best website for TheLampOnline.com and best front-page design. The staff also won second place for best media.

Bailey received the annual scholarship awarded by the association to students transferring to a four-year college. It is the third year the association has offered the scholarship, and an LLCC student has been an awardee all three years.

Individual first-place awards included: Lily Goossens of Springfield for feature writing, Addison Keeley of Springfield for headline, Lille Brown of Jacksonville for news column, Skye Kretzinger of Chestnut for podcasting and Regina Ivy of Springfield, spring 2020 editor of The Lamp, for staff editorial.

“Working remotely has been a challenge, but the staff remained committed. They continued to do excellent work, and it’s reflected in a record number of first-place awards,” said Tim McKenzie, adviser of The Lamp, professor of journalism and humanities, and president of the ICCJA. “The staff awards for best media and website are about overall quality. Those awards show what I’ve seen — a staff that all works together to do the best work that they can.”

Other awards included:

Bailey – second place, arts review; third place, news story and news column
Bailey, Goossens and Emily Pasley of Chatham – second place, news story of the year
Goossens – second place, news story
Ivy – second place, news photo and editorial writer of the year; third place, feature photo; honorable mention, news photo
Ryan Scott of Chatham – second place, sports game story
Keeley – honorable mention, sports column

11.09.20

The Lamp wins best website award

LLCC’s student newspaper, The Lamp, won first place in the John H. Ryan Best of Show for the best student website at the Illinois Community College Journalism Association’s fall conference on Thursday, Nov. 6.

“I’ve had a lot of students working hard to do hard news stories,” said Tim McKenzie, advisor of The Lamp and professor of journalism and humanities. “Our editor, Richard Bailey, has taken a lot of initiative and really done a lot to make The Lamp what it is.”

Typically, the award for Best of Show is given for the best single issue of the student newspaper, but because of limited printing of papers this year, the contest looked at websites. The judge noted that TheLampOnline.com had a lot new content, and it had a lot of hard news, not just opinion and features.

This is the second year in a row that The Lamp has won first place at the fall convention.

The fall conference was held virtually with a keynote speech from the founding editor of Deadspin, Will Leitch. Deadspin, part of Gawker Media, was the world’s largest sports entertainment blog shortly after Leitch’s founding of it.

McKenzie is a vice president of ICCJA. He introduced Leitch and facilitated two 20-minute breakout sessions. Bailey and LLCC students Emily Pasley and Nichole Sheley also attended the conference.

04.20.20

The Lamp student newspaper wins multiple awards

The Lamp student newspaper won 16 awards, including five first-place awards, at the Illinois Community College Journalism Association’s annual student awards presentation April 17. The awards were presented virtually via the association’s Facebook page due to cancellation of the conference.

The Lamp staff won first place for website. “That’s a great award because the website takes a team effort to have stories and editors,” said Tim McKenzie, adviser of The Lamp and professor of journalism and humanities. “It also prepared us for the new reality when the physical campus closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The students were able to continue producing content online.”

TheLampOnline.com has continued to be led by Regina Ivy of Springfield, editor; Tess Peterson of Springfield, assistant editor; and Ryan Scott of Chatham, assistant editor. Ivy was the recipient of the annual $1,000 scholarship awarded by the association to one community college journalism student who is transferring to a four-year college or university. This is the second year in a row that an LLCC student has won the award.

10.08.19

Congratulations to The Lamp!

The LLCC student newspaper, The Lamp, won first place in the John M. Ryan Best of Show at the Illinois Community College Journalism Association’s fall 2019 conference at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. The award is given to the community college with the single best issue of any student newspaper.

The judge wrote: “The most editorially robust paper among the entries. This paper provides readers with an appropriate mix of hard news, features, photography and sports. The writing and editing are strong, allowing reporters to breathe life into stories while staying true to journalistic standards. The papers designers provide a solid mix of traditional presentation and looser, more inviting and provocative publications. A quality publication in all aspects.”

Left to right: Tess Peterson, Tim McKenzie (advisor), Quinn Brown, Regina Ivy (editor-in-chief), Austin Sanderfield, Ryan Scott, Paul Watson and Cameron Boyer

Tim McKenzie, professor of journalism and humanities, is pictured with the seven Lamp staff members who attended the two-day conference at EIU, where they learned from journalism educators and professional journalists, such as an editor from the Chicago Tribune. They also heard from the director of the Illinois Press Foundation, Jeff Rogers, who is overseeing the creation of a news bureau in Springfield to cover state government. He talked about how non-profits are finding a place in the traditional for-profit media landscape.