UM dominates regional SPJ awards
R-TV program sweeps competition: Unabomber project also wins

By James Laber
J-School Web Reporter

photo by Lizz Rauf

Just a few of the SPJ Mark of Excellence contest certificates won by J-school students. Complete list of Region 10 winners.

The University of Montana Department of Radio-Television swept the first-place awards at this year’s regional Society of Professional Journalists convention, and a feature writing class project on the Unabomber took another four awards.

The R-TV department won all five radio categories and all but two television categories as UM dominated the competition, winning  32 awards overall.  Oregon State University was UM's closest competition, winning 10 awards.

SPJ rewards the best in student journalism in 39 categories for print, radio, television and online journalism. UM placed in 15 different categories, winning every category it entered.

The Region 10 Mark of Excellence competition included entries from Montana, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Students who received first place will have a chance to compete nationally against other first-place recipients with winners to be announced in July. This year there were more than 3,300 collegiate entries from 12 different regions.

Jackie Bartz, a junior majoring in broadcast, won first place in the radio feature category and third place in both radio news reporting and radio feature.  She said she was excited that her first-place feature piece, “Gym Jitters,” won because her teacher didn’t think it was especially good.

“It was a funny piece that showed my personality,” said Bartz. “It didn’t get a good grade [in class], so I got to rub it in to my teacher when it won.”

Bartz, along with broadcast junior Melanie Overcast and others, won the in-depth reporting category on a series of stories about the Rolling Stones coming to Missoula.

Overcast, who also took second in the radio feature and news reporting categories, said she was proud of the hard work the school as a whole has done to win so many awards.

“This has been a really great year,” said Overcast. “I’m proud of the school and the effort all of the students put in to win so many awards.”

“I had to ask the secretary [of the R-TV Department] to make sure we weren’t the only school that entered,” she added.

Print students were also honored with first place wins for Best Student Magazine and Online Feature Reporting for “The Unabomber in Montana: Ten Years After.” The 56-page magazine was written by students in Professor Sheri Venema's feature writing class, who examined Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's life in Montana and the effect of his arrest on the town of Lincoln.

Two students in the class also won awards for their stories in the magazine — Meghan Piercy a first-place in magazine non-fiction article for "Manhunt for a Terrorist," and Katrin Madayag a second place in the same category for "A Hero's Story."

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