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Contact: Jill Scoggins
jill.scoggins@tamuk.edu or 361-593-2146

Texas A&M-Kingsville Wins Record Number of Student Press Awards

KINGSVILLE, Texas (March 28, 2007) – Journalism, radio-television and graphic arts students from Texas A&M University-Kingsville set a university record by winning 29 different awards in Texas Intercollegiate Press Association (TIPA) competition in San Antonio, March 22-24.

Counting individual awards for students who worked on group projects, Texas A&M-Kingsville students won a total of 34 awards, including two first place staff awards.

The students, the majority of whom are staff members of A&M-Kingsville’s South Texan weekly student newspaper, led Texas A&M-Kingsville to a fourth place finish in Division III statewide competition against approximately 20 other Texas colleges and universities with similar enrollments and print production budgets.

In addition, the A&M-Kingsville students won nine awards in on-site competition against students from all 64 TIPA member universities and colleges that have journalism and radio-television programs. First place awards in on-site competition went to Juan Carlos Reyes for radio sportswriting, Krista Nix for public relations news and Roberta Flores for page one design.

“This is exciting,” Dr. Manuel Flores, adviser for the South Texan and associate professor of journalism/ communication, said. “We definitely have one of the better journalism programs in Texas for our size. In live, on-site competition, our students proved they can compete with the best students from the major universities in Texas. A&M-Kingsville does not take a backseat to anybody when it comes to media arts and our students proved it again and again and again last week.”

The South Texas special section on immigration took two first-place awards, one for in-depth reporting and the other for special section. “The recognition for our in-depth reporting on the immigration tabloid has been amazing; it continues to receive awards and make us proud for our hard work,” Dominique Garcia, editor in chief of the South Texan said.

The immigration section’s two first-place awards were among six first places, the most won by A&M-Kingsville students since 1970. The university has been competing in TIPA events since 1926. A third first-place award went to Ester Berrios for Spanish feature story.

Sophomore Angela Palacios, current managing editor of the South Texan, won six awards in the competition.  Palacios broke the A&M-Kingsville record of four awards given to an individual student, dating back to 1970 and tied in 2005.

“It’s such an honor to be a part of this news staff and have the opportunity to learn to perfect my work for events like TIPA,” Palacios said.

Palacios earned a second place award in single subject presentation for her feature on the card game “Hold ‘em” which became a craze among college students nationwide in recent years, took third place awards in news feature story and picture story and earned an honorable mention for feature page design.

Paul S. Martinez took second place in news story, shared third place in picture story and shared an honorable mention in news story with Nix. Martinez was South Texan editor in Fall 2006 and graduated from Texas A&M-Kingsville in December. He now is a reporter for the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise.

Nix also won or shared three awards. Besides her first place in public relations writing in the on-site competition, she won an honorable mention award for headline writing and shared honorable mention award in news writing with Martinez.

“I was ecstatic to see that all our hard work paid off and that we were able to represent Texas A&M-Kingsville like we did,” Nix said.

Edwin Vasquez also took three awards. He shared a third place in picture story, earned honorable mention in on-site Spanish newswriting and took second place in Spanish feature story. Catherine Meyers, Ted Briggs, Marina Martinez and Ester Berrios each won two awards. Individual awards went to Jeremy Martinez, Adrian Rodriguez, Matthew Bullock, Dominique Garcia, Sonny Garcia, Kirk Notorianni and Roberta Flores.

In addition to the South Texan, radio station KTAI-FM (91.1) is operated by the university and provides teaching and training opportunities for students interested in media careers.

More information about the South Texan is at http://www.tamuk.edu/southtexan/ and KTAI-FM at http://www.tamuk.edu/ktai/.

This page last updated 30 March, 2007