Points of Pride - College of Arts and Media

  • Carl Corey, a 1976 Cinema and Photography alumnus, received a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography. Corey has more than 100 awards from photography and publishing communities with his work featured in many of photography’s most prestigious periodicals.

  • Kathy Best, a 1979 alumna of the School of Journalism and editor at the Missoulian newspaper in Missoula, Mont., was the editor at the Seattle Times and part of a team at the newspaper that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting for work on a March 2014 landslide that killed 43 people and follow-up reporting.
  • “alt.news 26:46,” the student-produced television magazine program, has won seven College Television Awards and 31 regional Emmys.
  • William Freivogel, School of Journalism, earned the 2016 Silver Gavel Award for Other Media from the American Bar Association for his series of online St. Louis Public Radio news stories, “Law, Justice and the Death of Michael Brown.” The series examined events in the aftermath of the August 2014 shooting in Ferguson, Mo.
  • “In the Shadow,” a one-hour documentary created by professionals and students in the College of Mass Communications and Media Arts that looked at the run-up to the Great American Eclipse in Southern Illinois on Aug. 21, 2017, has been accepted into the River Town Film Festival in Clinton, New Jersey, Sept. 7-9.
  • The award-winning, student-produced newscast River Region Evening Edition is in its 49th year of live broadcasts on WSIU-TV.  The program has won national and state honors for "Best Newscast" and "Best Sportscast."  In 2016, the station earned three Illinois Broadcasters Association Silver Dome Awards, including an award for best long-form television program.
  • “Super Predator: Preludes of the Black Fish,” a film by cinema student and filmmaker Kelechi Agwuncha, earned national recognition as one of 25 independent short films featured in the 2018 PBS Online Film Festival.
  • WSIU Radio was named the 2015 Illinois Associated Press Station of the Year and won first place in the “Best Radio Newscast” category at the Illinois News Broadcasters Association convention.  WSIU also received “Best Radio Newscast” honors in 2012.
  • Seven photography students had their images selected by an outside juror to be featured in the 2015 fine arts photography journal.
  • “The Tragedy of Bataan,” a documentary by Jan Thompson, radio, television, and digital media, won a regional Emmy award for writing and two Emmy nominations in music and historical documentary categories.
  • Media scholar Jyotsna Kapur, cinema and photography, continues to advance understanding of the connections between political economy and the cinema. Her new book is “The Politics of Time and Youth in Brand India: Bargaining with Capital.”
  • Planning is underway by Department of Cinema and Photography faculty and students for the 41st annual Big Muddy Film Festival in 2019, one of the oldest film festivals affiliated with a university in the nation. The festival is set for Feb. 18-24.
  • A partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting gives students in the School of Journalism the opportunity to report on global issues through reporting fellowships. Recent work includes reporting on the continuing impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, children’s homes for abandoned youth in El Salvador, and rural education issues in Peru.
  • The student-run newspaper, The Daily Egyptian, continues to earn awards, as the newspaper celebrated its 100-year anniversary in 2016.
  • New Media Research Group, made up of tenure-track professors and graduate students in the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, researches the impact of social media on traditional media and society.  The group has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals.
  • Brad Palmer, producer, and Benjy Jeffords, digital media production specialist, WSIU Public Radio, received Illinois Associated Press awards at the 2016 Illinois News Broadcasters Association convention in. Palmer won second place in the “Best Sports Feature” category for his story on new Illinois High School Association rules regarding football and concussions. Jeffords, won second place in the “Best Videography” (TV) and “Best Hard News Feature” (radio) for his story on storm shelters built in Southern Illinois.
  • Edgar Barens, a two-degree graduate in the Department of Cinema and Photography, earned a 2014 Academy Award nomination for his documentary, “Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall.”
  • Recent cinema and photography graduates Charles Moore, Danny Cox and Holden Jones worked on the 2015 film, “Anomalisa,” one of the films nominated for “Best Animated Feature” in the 2016 Academy Awards.
  • “A Letter to Myself,” a documentary essay-style film by Amanda Neuhouser, a junior in cinema, was accepted into the 2016 Sioux Empire Film Festival and the 2016 Girls Impact the World Film Festival.