The Rider News wins 11 NJPF awards
By Caitlyn Sutton
The Rider News strives toward greatness in each issue of the university’s student-run newspaper. This year, the paper brought home 11 awards between six staff members at this year’s New Jersey Press Foundation.
The Rider News won first place for Best Overall Website, as well as third place for General Excellence. These two honors for The Rider News highlighted the work each student journalist does on Monday and Tuesday nights as they strive to make the paper as great as can be on Wednesdays.
Jake Tiger, a senior journalism major and outgoing executive editor at The Rider News, won four awards this year. He won second place for Biography/Personality Profile, second place for Enterprise/Investigative Reporting, first place for News Writing and first place for Web Project.
Tiger humbly expressed thanks to each section of the staff, as everyone worked together to finalize the award-winning stories.
“They are individual awards with my name on them, but they really are not just me,” Tiger said.
The Rider News did not fall short in reporting, editing or digging deep as they won awards across multiple categories from news to sports and videos.
Each staff member actively worked to produce great pieces and brought all 11 awards back to Rider. There is no skipping a “thank you” for any contributor — no one did this alone.
Despite having difficulties with splitting between online and print release schedule for the 2024-25 school year, The Rider News staff adapted and still made incredible achievements as a group of NJPF award-winning student journalists.
Josiah Thomas, a senior graphic design major, won first place for layout and design alongside senior graphic design major Maggie Kleiner. Thomas also won third place for online video and is a finalist with the Society of Professional Journalists for the Mark of Excellence title.
“Getting an award [finalist for the Mark of Excellence] like that, it really makes me feel very proud to be an artist because I personally love to just do it for fun,” said Thomas.
Junior journalism major Grace Bertrand won third place for Feature Writing, senior journalism major Hannah Newman won third place for News Writing and junior journalism major Benjamin Shinault won second place for Sports Writing.
The Rider News’ section editors, copy editors and reporters, as well as the executive and managing editors all work together to make the newspaper shine each week. NJPF recognition affirms the hard work The Rider News displays each week in releasing accurate information to the Rider community.
