Spectator named 2024 Best All-Around Student Newspaper in SPJ Mark of Excellence Region 1

The Society of Professional Journalists recognized Spectator with the 2024 Region 1 Corbin Gwaltney Mark of Excellence Award for “Best All-Around Student Newspaper” at a large school, the organization announced Monday.

Spectator last won the award in 2020. SPJ’s Region 1 includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Central and Eastern Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

In addition to winning “Best All-Around Student Newspaper,” Spectator staffers won in one other category and placed as a finalist in four. Spectator will move on to the national competition for “Best All-Around Student Newspaper” and the campus reporting category, with national winners announced in late spring.

Winners:

Corbin Gwaltney Award for Best All-Around Student Newspaper (Large)

Columbia Daily Spectator, by Columbia Daily Spectator staff.

Campus Reporting

‘Our campus. Our crisis. Inside the encampments and crackdowns that shook American politics.’ by Columbia Daily Spectator staff in collaboration with New York Magazine.

Finalists:

Sports Writing (Large)

‘‘It’s hard to stay silent’: Pro-Palestinian athletes on the risks of speaking out at Columbia’ by managing editor Heather Chen, CC ’26, and Sports senior staff writer Takashi Williams, CC ’25.

Breaking News Photography

‘Shafik authorizes NYPD to sweep ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment,’ officers in riot gear arrest over 100’ by Photo editor Stella Ragas, BC ’27.

Illustration

‘Inside Columbia’s surveillance and disciplinary operation for student protesters’ by 148th Illustrations editor Kelsea Petersen, CC ’25.

Campus Reporting

‘The stakes of solidarity: What low-income students risked the day of Columbia’s April 18 mass arrest’ by The Eye deputy editor Ann Vettikkal, CC ’25.