Students from the Troy University Hall School of Journalism and Communication (HSJC) received a dozen awards at the recent 2021 Southeastern Journalism Conference (SEJC), including three first-place awards for individual student submissions.

The Best of the South competition, held via Zoom on March 26, resulted in 12 Troy student and organization awards. The complete list of awards is as follows:

Best Sportswriter – Hanna Cooper – eighth place

Best Page Design – Hanna Cooper – third place

Best Opinion Writer – Sam Stroud – ninth place

Journalist of the Year – Brady Talbert – second place

Best TV Hard News Reporter – Brady Talbert – first place

Best TV Journalist – Brady Talbert – first place

Best TV Feature Reporter – Sam Granville – second place 

Best Radio News Reporter – Daisy Leng – second place

Best Radio Journalist – Marissa Lacey – first place

Best Radio Program – Talk of Troy – second place

Best College TV Station – TrojanVision – second place

Best Video News Program – TrojanVision – third place

The HSJC has multiple organizations dedicated to getting students experience and building portfolios, including TROY Public Radio, the TrojanVision daily broadcasts, the Tropolitan weekly newspaper and the Palladium yearbook.

Robbyn Taylor, the adviser for the Tropolitan and a professor in the HSJC, said the department submits for as many possible categories as they can every year. However, she finds the conference important for students to attend for reasons beyond just the awards.

“We travel to a different university every year, in normal years,” Taylor said. “So, they (the students) are able to chat with working journalists about how to do their jobs better and are also able to compete in on-site competitions and work in real time.”

Taylor also said that the diversity of the awards received each year reflects the kind of well-rounded journalists that the HSJC seeks to produce and show off skills other than just writing.

Troy University will be the host site of the 2023 SEJC convention, which will bring students, professors and journalists to the campus and get to see how TROY’s nationally sixth-ranked program operates and the kind of resources available to its students.

Taylor looks forward to the collaboration amongst students and with other schools who participate in the SEJC. Over 45 schools from across the Southeast participate and compete in the annual event.