UNC Hussman students win big at ACP Awards

by Beth Hatcher

UNC Hussman students and recent graduates won big at the recent Associated Collegiate Press (ACP) Awards for their team and individual work with The Daily Tar Heel in the prestigious national competition that honors the best in college media throughout the nation each year.

Chapel Fowler`20 and Dustin Duong `22 each took home first-place wins — Fowler for his sports game story,  and Duong for feature photography.   Duong also placed fourth in sports feature photography.

DTH staffer Heidi Pérez-Moreno `22, who transferred to UNC this semester, also won first place in the Reporter of the Year award in the two-year school division for her work with Miami Dade College’s student newspaper The Reporter.

Angelica Edwards `22 placed second for sports game/ action photography.

Recent grad Charlie McGee `20  took second place in the Reporter of the Year award for four-year schools division.

Rounding out the awards was a first-place Business Pacemaker award, a first-time category for the competition and a win heavily influenced by the UNC-Knight Foundation Table Stakes Newsroom Initiative, a program run through UNC Hussman’s Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media.  DTH leadership, including general manager Erica Perel, took part in the 2018-19 cohort of the program, which coaches media organizations on best practices in the digital age.

“In today’s news landscape, running the business side of the newspaper is really, really important and there is no such thing as a business side and an editorial side — we can’t have silos and walls,” Perel said.

ACP acknowledged the DTH’s 2019-20 leaders for the business award, including Molly Looman `20, Tyler Pollack `20, Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez `20 and Emily Siegmund `20.

In their application for the business award, DTH staffers outlined four main goals in the organization’s strategic business vision: becoming an indispensable, trusted guide to UNC and life for students; growing consumer and institutional revenue, diversifying and strengthening business-to-business revenue; and shifting to audience-centric practices across the organization.

Ultimately, good business practices lead to good journalism, providing a platform for the types of excellence in journalism the ACP recognized from DTH staffers, Perel said.

Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and John H. Stembler Jr. Distinguished Professor Charlie Tuggle applauded the excellence displayed in the award-winning DTH work, though he can’t say he’s surprised.

“We’ve come to expect excellence in our students, but it’s always nice to be recognized,” Tuggle said. “These students and their work truly reflect the values of UNC Hussman.”“An awesome surprise and a total honor” is how Fowler described his first-place win for his sports story “'Absolutely devastating': This loss, 98-96 in OT to Duke, is a brutal one for UNC.”  Perel called Fowler an agile writer adept at finding unique angles in his stories, important when covering sports events staffed by dozens of media outlets.

How does Fowler, now sports editor at the Chatham News + Record, find the story? He said he tries to “take readers somewhere they can’t be and give them something they can’t get anywhere else. Covering a game affords you unique access to players and coaches, and readers should be able to feel and benefit from that.”

Creativity and attention to detail also helped garner Duong his photography wins. The photo he took at the opening of a local park dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. could have been formulaic, but pictures of a ribbon-cutting wouldn’t cut it for him.  “I wanted to really tell the story of how the space was going to be used,” Duong said. So, he found a group of kids using swings in the park’s new playground — and then he waited. Once they forgot he was there, he took a picture of them playing.

Duong credits UNC Hussman faculty like Professor Patrick Davidson for his precision and drive. “He believed in me and he always pushed me to be better,” said Duong.

Qualities of precision and attention to detail are important for any photographer and also drive the work of Edwards, who won second place for sports game/ action photography for a picture she took at a UNC wrestling match.

“Besides being hard working and dependable, Edwards really has a beautiful eye and patience to capture an event,” Perel said.

Another hard worker with a keen eye for detail is McGee. The recent gradate won second place for the Reporter of the Year award for four-year schools for work he did about the contentious and controversial removal of the Silent Sam confederate monument from the UNC campus.

“Charlie’s work over the past year was very distinctive and very impactful, and Charlie is just a very hard worker. He’s always that person getting one more source, making one more phone call,” Perel said.

This summer, McGee served as a reporting intern for Bloomberg News.

“To me, the purpose of journalism and the value it can have at a local level by empowering communities with information shone through in my Silent Sam work. I'm most grateful personally to have produced reporting of that magnitude, regardless of any award,” McGee said.

The craft of journalism also drives the DTH’s other Reporter of the Year award winner, Pérez-Moreno.

Her win was based on stories she wrote about Miami Dade College’s ongoing presidential search and an obituary on a math lab manager.

“I like the way that journalism is always changing — the fact that each story is really different and teaches me something new,” Pérez-Moreno said.

Pérez-Moreno is already learning more about the craft at the DTH and within the walls of UNC Hussman, pointing out professors with vast real-world experience like Associate Professor Ryan Thornburg, who teaches her in the “MEJO 153: Writing and Reporting” course, as one of the reasons she transferred to UNC.

And the recognition from ACP for her work is a great way to kick off her UNC journey.

“It means a lot that other people recognize the effort and time that went into those stories,” Pérez-Moreno said.

See the ACP’s full list of winners.

Learn more about the DTH.