IDS, Arbutus bring home awards

During spring break, the Indiana Daily Student and the Arbutus Yearbook took a bite out of the Big Apple by bringing back five awards from the College Media Advisers Spring Conference.\nOut of thousands of papers, the IDS brought back a Gold Crown Award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association for spring 2007 and a Silver Crown Award from fall 2006. The Arbutus yearbook brought home a Silver Crown award for the 2006-2007 yearbook.\nGold Circle awards were also given out to the staff and individuals of each publication. The Arbutus yearbook received seven Gold Circle awards, the IDS received 20, INside magazine won eight and Weekend magazine received one.\n“These national awards are just a great recognition of the hard work the Indiana Daily Student and Arbutus yearbook do in their daily lives,” said Nancy Comiskey, interim IU director of student media. “They are basically working full time while they’re taking classes while trying to have a normal college experience. It continues the long tradition of excellence at the IDS and Arbutus yearbook.”\nBoth publications also received the David L. Adams Best of Show award, named after the IU student media director who died last summer. The Best of Show award was given to the best large university daily broadcast publication and best yearbook present at the conference.\n“Apple awards are a big deal,” said senior Carrie Ritchie, editor-in-chief of the IDS. “I feel like we honestly couldn’t have won a more special award. It makes us proud because (Adams) would have been proud and it’s what he would have wanted.”\nThe Arbutus yearbook also brought home two awards.\n“It’s a 400-some page book, and we can’t do that alone,” said junior Lea Wilcox, managing editor of the Arbutus yearbook. “The (then) editor-in-chief, Lauren Cooper worked really hard on it. It takes a lot of people to put it out.”\nThe David L. Adams Best in Show award is the first award for this semester’s IDS staff.\n“It just shows we’re really highly honored for newspapers,” Ritchie said. “It’s really prestigious because our competition is against every newspaper in the country.”\nThe conference took place March 16 through 18 in New York City. Representatives from the IDS, Arbutus yearbook and INside magazine all attended the conference.\n“There were a lot of really good speakers and a lot of good workshops,” Wilcox said. “One was lead by an IU alum who is an editor at Rolling Stone Magazine.”\nOnly nine or 10 crown awards are given in each division, and 12 Best of Show awards were given throughout the entire competition.\n“Just the idea of renaming the awards for Dave shows the impact he made on national media,” Comiskey said. “I think he’d be proud of those honors and even more proud of his students.”