The Linc have been commended for their efforts in hosting one of the best student websites in the country at the Guardian Student Media Awards (GSMA) 2009. Senior members of The Linc’s team travelled to London on Wednesday November 25th to represent the publication at the Guardian‘s 31st annual student media awards.
The prestigious event took place at Camden’s Proud Galleries, where the best 21 student publications and individuals in the UK attended. Matt Wells, the Guardian’s head of audio, said they had a record number of applications this year, and whittling down the last 21 from over 800 entries was a very difficult task.
As announced in September, The Linc was shortlisted among the top five student websites in the country, alongside York University’s Nouse, and others from Exeter University and Imperial College London.
The GSMA awards ceremony was hosted by BBC Radio 5’s Colin Murray. The winners in the website category of Wednesday night’s award ceremony were the University of York’s Nouse website, with Manchester Metropolitan’s Pulp as the runner up.
“The Linc are the first nomination for these awards in twelve years of teaching journalism here and five years of being a school. We are all very proud and pleased,” says Deborah Wilson, the programme leader at the Lincoln School of Journalism (LSJ).
Professor John Tulloch, head of the School, said The Linc “did wonderfully well, and the LSJ is proud.”
Among other winners, Leeds Student from the University of Leeds won the Best Student Newspaper of the Year award, while the University of Oxford’s Oxymoron won the Best Student Magazine of the Year award. (See the full winners list)
Earlier on Wednesday, The Linc team attended the Guardian Student Media Conference (GSMC), at their new offices at Kings Place. The conference hosted several series of talks and seminars from some high-profile journalists. Among the highlights were Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, Paul Johnson, deputy editor of the Guardian, Nick Davies, an award-winning investigative journalist at the Guardian, and the SkyNews.com team.
The GSMC painted a bleak outlook on the decline of newspaper sales and trust in the media. However, the speakers and attendees seemed to be positive about the future of journalism in general, when looking at the evolution of social and digital media.
Such an example would be the introduction of a Guardian Apple iPhone app in the coming weeks. This was announced by Alan Rusbridger, who also said the the application would not be free. This identifies with trends of paying for digital content on the internet, which was another topic widely debated at the conference.
Alan Rusbridger opened the GSMC conference, but was not able to attend his scheduled opening of the awards ceremony later in the day, due to food poisoning.