What a crazy couple of days.
Last night was the first ever Lincoln Media Awards. I’m ecstatic to say that my newspaper, The Linc, took home most of the awards. Of the ten on offer, our team grabbed these five: Headline of the Year, Best Reporting, Innovation Award, Sporting Chance and, to my utter delight, Editor of the Year. I promptly made the worst speech anyone in living memory has made, but I couldn’t hide my excitement that we all did so well.
This morning saw the arrival of Issue 10. The biggy. We’d saved our best story ’til last, and boy, it’s a cracker. But we knew, early on, that it would pose many risks. As the editor, I would be sticking my neck on the line in very dramatic fashion. I had to be prepared for all sorts of criticism. And that’s what I got.
Some more valid than others. I won’t go into them here — it would be unprofessional — but it is interesting to see the reaction of certain factions in a large institution when publicly criticised. Most interesting was threat of being sued by one particular area. Two reasons why this gave me an inward chuckle. Reason 1) there’s no reason to sue us. Reason 2) by suing ‘us’, they’d be suing the University. And by suing the University they’d be suing… themselves. Private Eye would enjoy that one, I’m sure.
Tomorrow will be another hard day. I’m yet to hear the reaction from ‘the top’ and, what is more, the story will be hitting the ‘real’ press when it runs in the Lincolnshire Echo. Early indications suggest that they’ll be hiding behind us when it comes to legality. I’m predicting a “The University of Lincoln student newspaper The Linc has claimed that drugs are being used on campus” rather than a more satisfying (and equally as honest) “There is crack cocaine being used on the University of Lincoln campus” line. But we’ll see.
You’d think, then, that the cocaine story would be our website’s biggest of the day, yes? No. If there’s one thing I’ve learned today, it’s that mention the words ‘BNP’ in an article and you’re destined to get comments galore. I couldn’t possibly say it on The Linc website, but I can happily say it here: they’re a bunch of racist idiots.
Nice one, Dave. Impressed!
JT
Sounds like a great story!
Vision had a similar incident involving the Conservatives Society after their chair reportedly stepped down ecause society members were using society cash to pay for their drug habits. the paper was threatened with legal action, but – like The Linc – both are part of the University so the threat soon quietened down.
Well down for having the balls to publish the story – must be part of the reason you won Editor of the Year!
Congratulations!
Congrat(s) with the awards. You’re story on cocaine brings back memories: have to admit we did a story on student politicians high on hasjish when I was doing student newspapers (my editor kinda saw this story as part of a moralistic crusade, I was the deputy then, before I took over. But we published on paper only so we warmed ourselves on how national media picked up our story, and were spared any criticism:-) )
Congratulations on this – it’s a level only a few of us budding student journalists can hope to achieve. Cracking story as well!