Cal Poly's Student Daily Newspaper, Mustang Daily, Takes Top Awards

SAN LUIS OBISPO -- The Mustang Daily, Cal Poly's student-produced daily campus newspaper, earned four top awards at the 2006 California College Media Competition.

Awards for the Daily included second place for General Web Site Excellence. Student columnist and Daily editor Mariecar Mendoza earned third place for Best Arts & Entertainment Column, and photographer Brennan Angel won third place for Best Sports Photo, an in-the-air shot of a Mustang football catch. The Mustang Daily also took third place in the Best Editorial category.

The California College Media Association offers the statewide competition each school year. The competition was judged by representatives from the Fresno Bee, LA Weekly, Orange County Register, Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News and LANG.

College and university newspapers entering the competition were grouped into five divisions. The Mustang Daily competed against other daily university newspapers published four or more times per week.

Mendoza won for her work on the arts and entertainment column "Billbored." The column, a play on the weekly music chart Billboard, lists the top 10 things to do for the respective week.

The Mustang Daily's award-winning editorials discussed the growing presence of plagiarism in the newspaper business shortly after the Mustang Daily responded to its own plagiarism incident, and the newspaper's role as a student public forum, free from censorship.

The Web site category, in which the Mustang Daily earned second place, was open to every college newspaper in California. The Mustang Daily redesigned its Web site, www.mustangdaily.net, added online editor Ryan Chartrand before re-launching in fall 2005.

The Mustang Daily Web site receives approximately 30,000 hits a day. Mustangdaily.net currently offers five online exclusive columns, breaking news, photo slideshows and multimedia provided by the campus radio station, KCPR 91.3 FM, and the campus television station, CPTV. The site is hosted by College Publisher.

"It was amazing seeing the Mustang Daily's Web site go from nothing to second place in just one quarter. And it deserves it too; there's plenty of content on it that people from around the world are enjoying every day," Chartrand said.

The Mustang Daily is the only university newspaper in the nation that is reported, edited and published entirely by students on a university campus. The Mustang Daily's advisor is Professor and Department Chair George Ramos, a Cal Poly alumnus and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly with the Los Angeles Times.

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