DCU students took home four awards on Wednesday night when they attended the Oxygen.ie National Student Media Awards, also known as the Smedias.
DCU received over 10 nominations, with winners including one former College View Irish Editor Derek O’Brien, who won Iriseoireacht trí Ghaeilge (Scríofa) and current College View News Editor Sarah Bermingham who received the prize for National Press Journalist of the Year. She was ecstatic with her win.
“I was delighted. I knew I wanted to be a journalist from a young age and as soon as I heard about the Smedias I thought I’d love to get one of those one day. I never thought last Wednesday would be that day” she commented.
Incoming Education Officer and former head of DCUfm, Ciaran O’Connor won the RSA Award for Journalism Relating to Road Safety.
DCUfm also bagged their fourth Radio Production of the Year for News and Current Affairs in a row due to their efforts in the December Newswire Budget Special.
Roísín Treacy, a prominent member of the Newswire team dedicated the award to her fellow students. “Winning the Smedia for Radio News Production of the year has been the highlight of the year for DCUfm News. We have such a strong news team and it’s so nice to have all of our hard work pay off in that way. It was the best possible way to finish our three years with the station”, she said.
The awards, which are in their 13th year, received entries from over 1,500 students from all across the country. The ceremony was attended by judges and industry professionals such as Bryan Dobson, Eileen Dunne and Vincent Browne. The event was hosted by TV personality Lucy Kennedy, while other celebrities in attendance included Jedward and Hardy Buck’s Francis “Viper” Higgins.
Other big winners on the night included Trinity College who won Newspaper of the year for their paper ‘Trinity News’ and UCD’s newspaper ‘The University Observer’ who bagged Editor of the Year.
There was a high level of talent and hard work shown by students at the event according to organiser Colman Byrne. He commented that more students were communicating through their blogs, Twitter and Facebook, however stressed that the awards show that “print media is much stronger than online”.
Finnian Curran
Image Credit: Marie Lecoq
Leave a Reply