The Durham College Chronicle, the campus newspaper, recently received a second place General Excellence Award at the Ontario Community Newspapers Association (OCNA) Better Newspapers Competition (BNC), which recognizes hard work, enthusiasm and dedication to the industry; outstanding citizenship; contributions to the community; and an overall passion for the newspaper industry.

The General Excellence Awards recognize overall achievement by a circulation class in editorial, advertising and layout with the Chronicle receiving its award at the OCNA Award Gala, which was held at the end of April at the Royal York Hotel, Toronto.

Second-year Journalism students are responsible for writing news and feature stories, opinion pieces and editorials for the Chronicle as well as taking photographs and designing pages. They are also responsible for uploading content onto the paper’s website.

“Faculty members are very proud of the great job students do in producing a professional quality newspaper,” said Gerry Rose, a Journalism professor and editor-in-chief of the Chronicle. “We know how hard students work to produce a weekly newspaper and meet deadlines.”

In addition to the college’s second place win, it enjoyed further success with Tara Hatherly, a 2011 Journalism graduate, coming in second in the Student News Writing category of the BNC’s College and University Awards.

Sponsored by the Ontario Journalism Educators Association, the award recognizes the outstanding work of Journalism students in news writing. Hatherly is now a reporter with Metroland Durham Region Media Group. 

“It’s gratifying to see students’ work recognized every year by the Ontario Community Newspapers Association, the people who will be hiring many of our grads,” said Rose. “Our students take great pride in their work and go above and beyond the call of duty.”

Durham College Journalism graduates Blake Wolfe and Rik Davie were also recognized during the awards ceremony. Wolfe was named second place Humour Columnist of the Year for his work with the Uxbridge Standard and Davie is the managing editor of the Scugog Standard, which received the first place General Excellence Award. Davie also won an OCNA award for student writing during his time as a Durham College student.

“Our students deserve congratulations. We hope to continue the Chronicle’s award-winning ways in the future,” added Rose.

Durham College continually places within the top three for the General Excellence Award at the OCNA BNC in addition to being recognized for student feature writing, news writing and best front page.