Once again, the news and sports departments of WFUV took home a bevy of awards this past spring.
“While WFUV is known as a music-formatted station, we are enormously proud of our award-winning news and sports departments,” said WFUV general manager Chuck Singleton.

The New York State Associated Press announced that the station had earned first place in three professional categories. News & Public Affairs Director George Bodarky received two of them: Best News Special Documentary and Best Interview. In addition, Bodarky received special mentions for Best News Series, Best Spot News Coverage, and the Art Athens General Excellence of Individual Reporting award.

The other first place award went to one of WFUV’s student journalists, Alex Smith, FCRH ’14, for Best Sports Coverage. In the student competition for The Memorial Award for Best News Story, Kris Venezia took first place.

Earlier this year, The Alliance for Women in Media Foundation presented a Gracie Award to Morlene Chin for Outstanding Host in the Entertainment/Information category.

The Society of Professional Journalists also took notice. The Mark of Excellence Awards went to three WFUV student journalists. Bobby Gubin won a regional award for Radio Feature, as did Alex Smith for Radio Sports Reporting. Connor Ryan won a regional award for the Radio In-Depth Reporting category and is now a national finalist.

In its annual newspaper contest, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) chose The Observer as the second-place finisher in the category of best all-around non-daily student newspaper for region 1.

The Observer won two more regional SPJ awards:
• third place in general sports writing category for Rob Beatson’s article, “Basketball Coach, Top Scorer, Gone from Rose Hill.”
• third place in sports column writing category for Ashley WennersHerron’s “Strange Sports” column.

“The dedication and persistence in producing a top-notch publication has paid off,” said WennersHerron,The Observer’s editor in chief and a senior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center. “The Society of Professional Journalists awards reflect the hard work that The Observer staff continuously puts into the paper.”

The regional awards were announced on April 10. First-place regional finishers go on to compete against each other in a national competition.

Adding to the list of accolades, The Observer won second place for general excellence in the New York Press Association’s 2009 Better Newspaper Contest. It was among 12 students newspapers at New York colleges and universities competing for the prize.

Finally, the paper was named a finalist for the ACP Online Pacemaker Award. Winners will be announced this September.

“The Observer editorial board and reporters have every reason to feel very proud, now that college journalism organizations have confirmed the excellence of the paper overall, the online multimedia and individual sports articles,” said Elizabeth Stone, The Observer’s faculty adviser.

This is the second set of awards that have come to the Lincoln Center campus newspaper this spring. It won second place in the category of “non-weekly four-year university paper” on Feb. 28 in the Best of Show Contest at the Midwinter National College Newspaper Convention.

The Observer also won first place in the category of “multimedia package contest” for “A Second Look: More Stops Along the 7 Train” by online editor P.J. Williams, a senior.