CM Life earns All-American title
Central Michigan Life received four out of five marks of distinction from an independent judge earning the title All-American.
“We didn’t get the mark of distinction for leadership but we still scored high in that category,” said Nick Buonodono, last year’s editor and Midland senior. “What the judge suggested was to make the editorial page stronger. We addressed that issue the following semester by creating the position of editorial page editor, before receiving the judges comments last week.”
Every year CM Life sends out papers to independent judges through the Associated Collegiate Press, who arranges to have the paper critiqued in the five areas of coverage and content, writing and editing, photo art and graphics, layout and design and leadership, Director of Student Media Neil Hopp said.
“It is always nice to get a second opinion beyond what our adviser has to say about the newspaper because we can kind of see how somebody who is not familiar with us views the newspaper,” Buonodono said.
The highest distinction a paper can receive is All-American and Hopp said the paper has won that award the last two years and numerous times in the last 15 to 20 years.
“From my standpoint, as an adviser, it’s gratifying to see another professional tell us we are doing that well,” he said. “A lot of what we do is graded everyday in a critique, and what this does is simply reinforce all the lessons we are trying to teach.”
Buonodono, the paper’s editor during the fall 2002 and spring 2003 semesters said the award is another sign the paper is headed in the right direction.
“I think its another thing we can point to when trying to attract budding journalists into our program here,” he said.
Hopp and Buonodono both attribute the papers previous success to its staff.
“I think it shows number one, the editor has a great sense of how to operate the paper, and I think he forms a team around him that knows how to sign out good stories, knows how to edit well and put together a well-packaged newspaper,” Hopp said.
Hopp said CM Life competes in two contests a year, this rating service and the Pacemaker, for which the paper is a finalist.
“Between the two of them we feel we are getting a solid outside view of our performance,” he said. “You can’t score any higher than All-American and that tells me we rank among the best college papers.”
