The OU Daily was awarded its 16th Gold Crown and Crimson Quarterly magazine was awarded its first Silver Crown in results announced Wednesday by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.
The awards, among the top organizational honors bestowed in collegiate journalism, recognize overall excellence in a head-to-head comparison of the nation’s top student media publications evaluating design, photography, concept, coverage and writing. This year the judges were sensitive to the challenges COVID-19 raised to student publications.
It marked the sixth consecutive year in which The Daily was a Gold or Silver Crown honoree, the longest on record in Daily history, and the first for Crimson Quarterly.
The Daily’s fellow Gold Crown hybrid news honorees were the Indiana Daily Student and the Baylor Lariat. Eight publications earned Silver Crown accolades.
Crimson Quarterly was one of three Silver Crown general print magazine honorees. Five publications earned Gold Crown accolades in the category.
Jordan Miller, who is now at the Salt Lake Tribune, was The Daily’s editor-in-chief supervising all the newsroom’s work for the period judged. The Crimson Quarterly issue cited was edited by Beth Wallis and Donna Edwards, who now work for StateImpact Oklahoma and the Associated Press in Bangkok, respectively, and was dedicated to the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
The Daily’s longest prior streak of consecutive Crown finalists, per available records, was five years (1996-2000).
Only two other schools beyond the University of Oklahoma had publications named Crown finalists in both hybrid news and general print magazine. Columbia College in Chicago earned the dual distinction for its Echo magazine and columbiachronicle.com. Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, did so for its Measure magazine and maristcircle.com.
Across all news and non-literary magazine categories, OU was one of just five universities to be honored in both. Beyond Columbia and Marist, the other two are Los Angeles City College for its Collegian Times (general print magazine) and Los Angeles Collegian (print newspaper) and Ball State University for its Ball Bearings (hybrid general magazine), Daily News (hybrid news) and Byte (digital general magazine).
Founded in 2015, CQ became the longform journalism successor to Sooner yearbook, which won 12 Gold and six Silver crowns before it ceased operations in 2019 following the publication of its 110th edition.