By Phillip Suitts
For the seventh time in the last eight years, The Southerner, Grady’s newspaper, has been named a Crown Award finalist . The Crown Award is the highest national honor that the Columbia Scholastic Press Association awards to its member publications.
This year, CSPA received 1,351 scholastic and collegiate publications for Crown Award consideration. The Southerner was one of 41 high school newspapers to be named a 2012 Crown Award finalist. A judging panel of distinguished journalists and journalism educators evaluated the publications in the following categories: content, design, coverage, photography, and writing and editing. The 2012 Crown Awards finalists are being judged by their 2010-2011 products.
The top third (approximately) will be named Gold Crown Awards winners at the CSPA’s 88th annual Convention, on Friday, March 16, 2012 in the Roone Arledge Auditorium of the Alfred Lerner Student Center on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. All other Crown Award finalists automatically receive a Silver Crown Award at the CSPA annual convention on the Columbia campus in March. Since 2005, The Southerner has won Silver Crown Awards in every year but 2009.