The Daily Campus received six awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s Better Newspaper Competition in the college division on Saturday, March 14, tripling the number of awards won last year. As the university’s only student-run newspaper and the sole daily-print paper in the news desert of Tolland County, The Daily Campus continues its 130-year-long mission to serve the campus and local communities and to train generations after generations of journalists.
The Better Newspaper Competition awards recognize excellence in reporting from the previous year, meaning all rewarded reporting took place during the 2024-2025 academic year. The Daily Campus earned two first-place awards in this year’s competition. The first was presented to an editorial about the strain of the University of Connecticut’s enrollment growth on students and the local community. Former Daily Campus news editor Aiza Shaikh and former writers Joey Gottlieb and Liliana French earned first-place in the “Right to Know” category for their article showing emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act between UConn President Radenka Maric and university administration regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Daily Campus also earned four second-place awards. Photo Editors Connor Sharp and Emma Meidinger each earned awards in the Sports Photo and Feature Photo categories respectively. Associate Managing Editor Colbi Loranger earned an award for her design of the Nov. 7, 2025 opinion page, which featured articles regarding the results of the presidential election. French won another award for her news article about 245 academic programs at risk of being cut.
As seen in cases such as the Indiana Student Daily and Morgan State University’s The Spokesman, student journalism is under siege. University administrations have attempted to censor and control student media by monitoring who student journalists can interview and how or when they can distribute news to campus. Student journalists are among the most vulnerable members of the media as they have limited access to funding, equipment and other resources necessary to run a newsroom. This academic year, Florida State University’s student paper, the FSView, eliminated its printing and became an online-only publication. Many college papers have cut their circulation from daily to weekly, or from weekly to monthly, leaving The Daily Campus as one of the last daily print papers in both the college and professional spheres.
The Daily Campus believes it’s imperative that student journalism is supported not just by their organization’s universities, but also by their local communities. Per the Daily Campus mission statement, the paper aims “to provide the best possible environment for students to learn, experience and develop skills related to news media.” Student media organizations are training facilities for the next generation of journalists. We are training students to one day investigate wrongdoings in local and national governments, to gain the trust of sources when they are in their most vulnerable states and to capture compelling stories that make people feel more connected to their communities. To be able to get student journalists to that level, student media needs the freedom to practice journalism without fear of repercussions from the institutions that house them.