Peter Merrill, deputy news editor

This year, Georgia College Press Association (GCPA) announced that the Carrier won 12 awards and the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) announced that Valkyrie won six. For CSPA, institutions from across the United States submitted more than 9,000 print news, yearbook, magazines and digital media contest entries. Representatives from Berry took many of the awards.

The GCPA awarded the Carrier as a whole first place for Best Campus Community Service—Editorial, Layout and Design Excellence and Best Newspaper Website. The Carrier recieved third place in General Excellence, Best Campus Community Service—Sports, General Photography Excellence and General Advertising Excellence.

Kevin Kleine, senior lecturer of communication and student publications adviser, said that it is typical for the Carrier to take home awards, but that no one had ever placed in the investigative reporting category in his time at Berry. However, this year, students Taylor Corley, senior and Editor-in-Chief of the Carrier, and sophmore Katelynn Singleton, news editor, won first and third place respectively with their articles, “Students and faculty call to expand Asian American community at Berry” and “Three students arrested and charged for property damage.” Corley also won first place for Best Photograph— News, for “Nurses Demand Medical Freedom.”

“Awards in my view are simply a recognition of the excellent service that the Carrier provides to its readership: students, faculty, staff and alumni,” Kleine said. “It’s simply a representation of that service and that excellence. Though awards are great, what’s more important to me is that they’re doing their job, they’re following proper journalistic method and process and that they’re providing information that their audience need, wants to know about and more broadly, what’s happening in our society and our democracy.”

Corley wrote her award-winning piece about the experience of Asian American students who felt like they didn’t have a support group on campus in the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings in 2021. 

“I reached out to a couple of people on campus who were willing to talk to me and share their stories about times they had experienced discrimination or were ridiculed for their race and how those experiences shaped them.” Corley said. “I would not have been able to write the story that I did if the people that I interviewed weren’t vulnerable and willing to put that experience into words.”

Nolan Scoretz, junior and Carrier photo editor won third place in the Best Sports Photograph category for his photo, “Volleyball’s Success.”

“It’s cool to gauge yourself against other students and organizations, but since I’ve just gotten into this hobby fairly recently, and sports was something I never shot before coming here, it’s really cool to see how much I’ve grown as a photographer,” Scoretz said.

Sophia Coon, sophomore and Carrier photographer won second place in the Best Photo Essay category for “Berry swim team holds 2-0 conference record.”

“The depiction, like the pixelation for swimming is a lot harder for me to photograph when they’re going in and out of the water, especially since the water distorts them,” Coon said. “So for this one I had to get more up close and wait for them to reach certain surfaces before I was able to take photos.”

Berry students also won individual CSPA awards. Senior Claire Rowan placed first in both the single news feature photograph and Certificate of Merit for “Death Penalty.” Additionally, Rowan along with Audrey McNew (21c) and Senior Sydney Kate Watson won a Certificate of Merit for “A Couple of Rhymes About COVID Times.” Kaitlan Koehler (21C) won second place for the Valkyrie table of contents, the Valkyrie staff got third place for table of contents and the piece “Quarantine Essentials.”

“I’m extremely proud of everyone on staff, I’m proud of all of us, because a lot of the awards were for the Carrier as a whole and a lot of people don’t see the day in and day out work that it takes to be on the Carrier,” Corley said. “I just really appreciate everything that everyone does and I’m really glad that they trust me enough to be editor-in-chief for two years. I think that these awards speak to what we bring to the table when all of us come together.”

Berry students who work with both the Carrier and Viking Fusion swept the CSPA Photo and Audio Slideshow awards, with Noah Syverson’s first place “Delzer Woodworks,” McKenna Lentych’s second place, “Finding Faith and Recovery” and Mike Myers’s third place “Ryan Simmons, Filmmaker.” Scoretz won a Certificate of Merit for “The Artisan in Glass.”