michigandaily.com Wins Award

by Editor in Chief, Stephanie Steinberg

The Michigan Daily won first place for the best website of a college newspaper at a large school.

The award was given at the 27th annual ACP National College Journalism Convention Conference March 3-6 in Hollywood, California. Three Daily editors attended the event, which included workshops and talks by professional journalists. Managing Arts Editor Sharon Jacobs went to the conference and said one of the highlights of the weekend was winning the best website award.

“Many of the conference events concerned multimedia improvement and web design, so it’s exciting to be recognized by a group so clearly invested in college newspaper websites,” Jacobs said.

Michigandaily.com has been a work in progress the past few years, and several editors have made it their mission to establish a website that students, faculty, alumni and readers around the world turn to for University of Michigan news. Over time, the website has undergone multiple designs, gained new features like the ability to view videos and has evolved with the social media landscape by offering readers the opportunity to share content on Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

The award was met with excitement from the staff as it proved that our efforts to post breaking news, live blog sporting events and continuously update the website with fresh content has not gone unnoticed.

Web Development Manager Sarah Squire has spent a lot of time this semester working on improvements to the website so that our web content stands out from our print edition.

“This award is motivation to continue developing new features and online content that will improve our web presence and hopefully cause the Daily to become a model, not only for college newspapers, but for all types of publications to turn to when developing their own sites,” Squire said.

The Daily plans to continue to set the bar high and ensure that www.michigandaily.com remains the best college website in the nation.