The Record Staff takes home 12 awards

The Record Staff took home 12 Minnesota Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest Awards last week, including a top-three finish for General Excellence for the third year in row.

Four past and present staff members of The Record attended the awards ceremony on Jan. 29 at the Minneapolis Marriott Northwest in Brooklyn Park to accept the awards, given for work completed during the 2024-25 academic year.

“Our staff works hard to ensure we produce the best quality news for our communities, and it’s great to be recognized in this way for what we do,” The Record’s editor-in-chief Kayla Anderson said. “As always, I’m grateful for all of our talented student editors, writers and photographers, and especially our incredible Advisor Kelly Smith.”

The Better Newspaper Contest is held every year as part of the MNA’s annual convention.

This year marked the 159th convention and trade show, which is one of the top state news media association conventions in the U.S.

“We’re in a very unique position at these schools, since we don’t have a dedicated journalism program,” The Record’s managing editor Kate Stearns said. “But despite this, The Record is consistently taking top honors in multiple categories year after year.”

In addition to a 3rd place finish in general excellence, the staff took home 11 individual awards in the following categories: government/ public affairs reporting, business story, news photo, feature photo, photo story, columnist and editorial.

These individual awards were presented to current staff members Kayla Anderson and Erin Thom, current student Summer Langva, and CSB+SJU alumni Andrew Adams, Martha Dougherty, Macy Ellis, T Meier, Graham Miller and Em Karsten.

“The Record is a really special part of CSB+SJU campus life, and we’re proud to be part of a long- standing legacy of exceptional people that make this paper what it is,” Anderson said.