J-School up for multiple Online Journalism Awards

Current and former J-School students will travel to Chicago to attend the Online News Association’s 2014 Conference & Awards Banquet from Sept. 25-27. The annual conference provides an opportunity for industry leaders to discuss the latest tools and techniques of digital journalism.

Two recent J-School alums have been named finalists in the Online Journalism Awards’ student category. Avni Nijhawan (’14) is a finalist for Fearless, an interactive documentary about sexual violence and harassment in India. Jason Jaacks (’14), a visual journalism lecturer at the J-School, was nominated for Return to Elwha, a multimedia story that focuses on a dam removal project in Washington.

“I couldn’t be more excited that the ONA has nominated two of our students work as finalists for the OJA,” said New Media professor Richard Koci Hernandez. “I’m so proud of the work of Avni and Jason for their original and innovative approaches to online journalism. Both of these projects embody our program’s philosophy of pushing boundaries and redefining how a story can be presented online.”

The School’s Investigative Reporting Program has also been named a finalist for the Knight Award for Public Service for Rape in the Fields. The 2013 program, which was a collaboration between the IRP, Frontline, The Center for Investigative Reporting, and Univision, investigated the prevalence of sexual assault on migrant farm workers in the United States.

Second-year student Beatrice Katcher (’15), one of this year’s recipients of the AP-Google Scholarship, will take the stage at ONA14 to talk about a web and mobile app she is developing that will enable children to engage with journalism. The app will not only enable children to consume news — it will also give them the tools to report the news.

Paul Grabowicz, director of the J-School’s New Media program, will also attend ONA14, and he will be joined by three second-year students: Mark Andrew Boyer (’15), Jake Nicol (’15) and Jason Paladino (’15).