Campus Times Receives Gold Award
Campus Times, the university’s student newspaper, was recently ranked as one of the highest tier college news publications in the United States. It earned the Columbia Scholastic Journalism Association’s Gold Medal award for overall journalism excellence for Newspaper/Online Hybrid Publications for the 2022-2023 academic year.
This kind of recognition should come as no surprise, seeing as this is the publication’s 19th time receiving a gold medal award in the last two decades.
Professor of journalism and chief advisor to the Campus Times, Elizabeth Zwerling, is entering her 23rd year teaching at the university. Her leadership has helped guide her already-brilliant students to greatness.
“I am incredibly proud of them,” she said. “Every year, our students come into class with varying degrees of experience and understanding of journalism, but they jump in immediately and troubleshoot and learn through a whole system of peer mentoring.”
Zwerling steers a tight ship: the publication’s news cycle is fast-paced and deadline-driven in an attempt to mimic working conditions students will see in the journalism field post-graduation. Every student on the Campus Times staff is expected to publish one story a week, which amounts to a total of 27 weekly issues in an academic year.
For their 2022-2023 reporting, Campus Times received a score of 964 out of 1,000 points for depth and breadth of coverage, visual components, editing and writing. Their high score year’s gold medal received a distinction of “All Columbian”.
Eric Borer, Campus Times’ operations manager and photography advisor, witnessed the publication flourish during his more than 30 years at the university. According to Borer, it’s exciting to see student work repeatedly acknowledged and rewarded for high quality.
“It’s a good indicator of the quality program we have and the education we are able to give students,” he said. “Year after year, we produce good journalists who become excellent professionals in the industry.”
The University of La Verne is proud to support and encourage students toward academic and career excellence. The Campus Times is a laboratory publication for newspaper production, journalism, and photography courses. See full list of awards won throughout the years. To read some of the award-winning journalism mentioned, visit the Campus Times website or find physical copies of their publications across our main campus.
