sheila sobchikThe Mustang Daily took home four awards, including second place for “General Web site Excellence,” from the 2006 California College Media Competition. The competition was judged by representatives from the Fresno Bee, LA Weekly, Orange County Register, Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News and LANG.
The California College Media Association offers a statewide competition each school year. Diversions editor Mariecar Mendoza earned third place for “Best Arts & Entertainment Column” and photographer Brennan Angel won third place for “Best Sports Photo,” a Mustang football shot of an acrobatic catch. The Mustang Daily also took third place for “Best Editorial.”
The competition grouped newspapers into five divisions; the Mustang Daily competed in Division A for daily newspapers published four or more times per week.
However, the Web site category was open to every college newspaper in the state. The Mustang Daily Web site, mustangdaily.net, did a complete overhaul before the 2005-06 school year. Online editor Ryan Chartrand was a new edition to the editorial staff lineup.
The Web site receives approximately 30,000 hits a day. Mustangdaily.net currently offers five online exclusive columns, breaking news, photo slideshows and multimedia provided by the campus radio station KCPR 91.3 FM and the campus television station CPTV.
“It was amazing seeing the Mustang Daily’s Web site go from nothing to second place in just one quarter. And it deserves it too; there’s plenty of content on it that people from around the world are enjoying every day,” Chartrand said.
Mendoza won for her work on the arts and entertainment column “Billbored.” The column, a play on the weekly music chart Billboard, lists the top 10 things to do for the respective week.
The Mustang Daily also submitted two editorials; one responded to the growing presence of plagiarism in the newspaper business shortly after the Mustang Daily responded to its own plagiarism incident, and the second editorial declared the newspaper a public forum run completely by students and free from censorship.