SAN DIEGO — The Daily Targum, a student newspaper at Rutgers University, is the winner of the 2009 Associated Collegiate Press’ Best of Show award for four-year college dailies.
ACP awarded the Targum for their Nov. 5, 2008, election issue, which featured on-site reports from Chicago, Phoenix and the New Jersey senators’ race.
The Targum placed first in the national contest ahead of second-place University of California, Los Angeles’ The Daily Bruin and third-place University of California, Berkley’s The Daily Californian.
The Targum’s Editor-in-Chief John S. Clyde accepted the award on behalf of the newspaper at the National College Journalism conference in San Diego.
“I was crossing my fingers praying that the Targum would win because I knew this was a competitive contest against highly reputable papers,” said Managing Editor Angelina Y. Rha.
“It has been four long years since we last won this award and I am extremely pleased to bring this prestige back to the Banks where it belongs,” said the former Targum Editor-in-Chief Dan Bracaglia. “I can also with confidence say that there is no college community in the nation more deserving of the nations best college daily paper than Rutgers University.”
Bracaglia credited the work of the Targum’s editors, photographers and writers for the issue’s success and said his proudest moment was not winning the award but seeing everyone put in their all on election night.
“Despite having our most seasoned editors covering the election on location in both Chicago and Phoenix, being understaffed and staying up all night editing and finalizing the issue, we as a staff were able to all contribute and put together something that we all could agree was our best work,” Bracaglia said.
“Everyone was excited and bought into the idea, and really worked hard to put it together, and you can see the results,” he said.
“The energy, excitement and emotion radiating from the crowd when Obama clinched the election was surreal and all consuming,” said News Editor Caitlin Mahon. “It’s a moment in history that I will never forget and a real world journalistic experience that I learned a great deal from.”
Clyde, Mahon, Rha and Associate Online Editor John Gilday attended the convention, which featured speakers and panels from across the country.
“The speakers here had good material but I was excited to talk to other online editors and share lessons learned,” Gilday said. “We learned that there are a lot of free multimedia tools on the web that we can use now to make our online presence more informative and interactive with our community of readers.”
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