Broadcast students place first in national SPJ contest

Two recent graduates of The University of Montana’s School of Journalism have won top honors in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence Contest. Danielle Dellerson of Big Fork and Natalya McLees of Kalispell won first place in the television spot news category. Both are 2002 graduates of the Radio-Television Department. The awards were given at the 2002 SPJ national convention in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 14. Both were on hand to accept their award.

Dellerson and McLees produced a television news report for Montana PBS on the November 2001 murders of three women in Florence, Mont.

Photo by Denise Dowling

Danielle Dellerson, Natalya McLees and Johanna Feaster wait for the award announcement at the national SPJ convention in Dallas.

That coverage won first place in the region in the spot news category, then faced 11 other regional finalists.

"It was very difficult for these young women to go into a community suffering such pain," said assistant professor Denise Dowling. "They approached people in Florence with compassion, which really shows in the quality coverage they produced. I know Danielle and Natalya learned some tough lessons from the experience. It’s gratifying to see their work honored in this way."

Senior Johanna Feaster of Brookings, S.D., was one of three finalists in the radio feature category. She won the regional competition with her story on damage done by skateboarders in Missoula. The story originally aired on KUFM-FM.

This year’s competition drew more than 2,700 entries in 45 categories for print, radio, television and online collegiate journalism. Since 1972, the society has presented the Mark of Excellence Awards.

"The Mark of Excellence competition represents some of the finest examples of collegiate print, broadcast and photojournalism in the country," said SPJ Vice President for Campus Chapter Affairs Jim Highland, director of print journalism at Western Kentucky University.

"This was probably the most competitive Mark of Excellence contest so far," said Guy Baehr, chairman of SPJ’s Awards and Honors Committee. "Total entries increased by almost a third over last year. We expected some increase with the addition of nine new online categories, but in fact, most of the almost 700 additional entries were in categories other than online."

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