Jakob Milani
Contributing Writer
[email protected]

The News took home 21 awards this year in the 2020 Kentucky Press Association contest, including the top award.

Gage Johnson, Editor-in-Chief, said a lot of hard work goes into producing the newspaper, website and social media. He won 10 of the 21 awards given to staff.

“I was on cloud nine, I’m not gonna lie to you,” Johnson said. “In such a weird year, it’s been very odd in trying to find the motivation to do work at times, but this was one of those reminders that all that time I have spent that I thought that nobody was reading, nobody was watching, it let me know that all my efforts really did pay off and that I have a future in this. I can take from this and grow. I think that’s what means the most to me about it.”

The News also won the award for general excellence in Kentucky newspapers for the second year in a row. Johnson discussed how important it is to him and the entire staff to win this award again.

“When I got the message from everyone, I almost got choked up because we’ve put in so much work over the past few years. We’ve won some awards but we have always just fallen a little short, then we finally got there in these last two years.”

Stephanie Anderson, faculty adviser said the students deserved all of these awards for their hard work this year. 

“It is an absolute pleasure to be able to work with this group of talented young journalists,” Anderson said. “The amount of work that these student journalists put in typically goes unnoticed as it is behind the scenes. They work long nights and weekends to keep the campus and community informed on top of their class schedules. I couldn’t be more proud of their hard work, dedication and journalistic abilities.”

Visit TheNews.org for a list of the awards.