Every spring, Journalism faculty nominate the best work of the year for the Student Journalism Award, which comes with a cash prize and a book.
This year, Kaitlyn Williams won honorable mention with her story “Sex ed, hookups, and a Catholic college.” As one faculty judge put it: “ Kudos to Kaitlyn for handling a topic that's touchy on multiple levels—sexuality, religion, and government are all hot-button issues, and the context of Boston College heightens the tension they possess individually and together—with such care and thoughtfulness.”
The first-place award was a tie between Phoebe Swartz for her piece “The Palisades Fire, One Year Later” and Josie Domet for her story "The City That Folded in on Itself."
Here’s what the judges said about Swartz’s story: “Sensitive, nuanced reporting produces lots of resonant scenic detail and memorable quotes; careful attention to prose helps us to get inside post-catastrophe lives; and there’s a nice balance of big picture and detail. All of that goes to admirably execute the objective of making statistics come alive as individual lives that have been suddenly shunted from Before to After.”
And here’s what the judges said about Josie’s piece: “A smart, vividly written explanation of a question that plagues both residents of and visitors to Boston: Why are the streets like that? Josie Domet blends historical data with present-day testimonies to explain (and bust myths about) how Boston's tangled map turned into such a snarl, and her look at the city's next chapter of road-building is refreshingly realistic, with her admittance that ‘rationality is not the city’s natural state’ a great line that sums up the rest of her piece quite well.”
Congratulations to all the winners, who were honored at the Journalism Program’s end-of-year dinner in late April, and to Professor Jon Marcus, who nominated all three pieces.