Reflecting on an award winning year
By Sarah Siock and Shaun Chornobroff
At The Rider News, the staff is dedicated to producing trustworthy news for the Rider community. As an independent student-run publication, the staff understands the great responsibility of keeping the student body informed and shedding a light on issues the university faces.
Editors at The Rider News work tirelessly each week to produce a paper that we take great pride in. Putting together the paper every Wednesday is no easy task, and every person on the staff plays a crucial role in the process. Section editors’ lives are consumed on Monday and Tuesday evenings, as the job requires intense attention to detail and diligent fact-checking. Every story is written with intention from an impartial standpoint and carefully reviewed by editors before being published.
Students choose to work for the paper while taking a full course load because they are dedicated and have a passion for journalism. Being a student journalist comes with a responsibility for integrity that is not only instilled in the journalism and media programs at the university but taken seriously by each writer and editor at The Rider News.
Most recently The Rider News’ hard work was recognized by state and regional competitions. Collectively, the paper won eight awards from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the New Jersey Press Foundation (NJPF). These awards were given to news and video stories that explored important topics such as accessibility on campus and student wages.
These awards speak to the care and effort put forward by the staff. Without a staff of editors and reporters who strive for accuracy and quality, these awards would not have been possible. We do not aim to just write articles; The Rider News asks tough questions, searches for multiple sources and strives for credibility. The stories published in The Rider News — whether news, sports, opinion or features and entertainment — give an authentic account of the university.
Rider as a whole is at a pivotal and transitional point in its storied history. The entire staff at The Rider News recognizes the crucial role it has in communicating these often complex topics to the community.
As a paper of record, we strive each and every week to produce content that is well-done and engaging, but most importantly, informs the Rider community of the current state of the university.
The NJPF and SPJ noticed the paper’s reputable work when recognizing The Rider News with a plethora of awards, including a third-place award for general excellence, in which the judges commended the paper for its efforts across all sections.
For more than 90 years, a standard of accurate and truthful reporting has been essential to the success and recognition the newspaper brings to Rider. This is a standard the current staff continues to uphold with each issue distributed to the university .
