NEW YORK (November 30, 2005) – The Observer, the award-winning student newspaper of Fordham University, is proud to announce that former Editor in Chief Corinne Iozzio has been selected as the recipient of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s David W. Miller Award for Student Journalists.
Iozzio, who graduated from Fordham College at Lincoln Center in May 2005, received the award for three articles that were printed in The Observer during her tenure as editor in chief from Fall 2004 to Spring 2005.
The first two reports, which were published in November and December of 2004, centered on the Cardinal Newman Society and its campaign against performances of “The Vagina Monologues” being underwritten by and performed at Catholic universities across the nation.
The first article, originally published on November 18, 2004, was titled “Fordham alum battles liberal ‘bias’ on campus” and focused on the Cardinal Newman Society’s mission and its founder, Patrick Reilly, a 1991 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill.
The second article, titled “Faculty members add selves to Newman Society’s ‘blacklist,'” was published on December 9, 2004, and further described a Newman Society-generated list of faculty members at Catholic institutions, including Fordham, who made contributions to Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. In the article, several Fordham faculty members revealed that rather than being intimidated by the list, they instead requested the Cardinal Newman Society to add their names to the list.
“When I was writing the Cardinal Newman pieces, I was just trying to get as much information out as possible,” Iozzio said yesterday. “When doing research, I found that no one had really explored the Cardinal Newman Society and its campaigns before.”
Iozzio’s third article, “Some FCLC classrooms become scenes of intimidation, students say,” focused on conservative students who said they felt silenced by overwhelmingly opposite political views presented by students and professors in classrooms. Iozzio said she thought about exploring the topic after several politically conservative friends had raised the issue to her.
The David W. Miller Award for Student Journalists, now in its third year, is awarded each year by The Chronicle of Higher Education. The award honors David W. Miller, a senior writer at The Chronicle who, in 2002, was killed at the age of 35 by a drunken driver. According to The Chronicle, the award seeks to pay tribute to Miller’s “first-rate journalism, insatiable curiosity about people and ideas, and talent and love for great writing.” Candidates for the award are judged on whether or not their writing is “journalistic, using expository, explanatory, narrative, or other techniques to report evenhandedly on a topic of intellectual interest” and if the writing reports “a new trend, discovery, or theory; an important scholarly debate; an issue with both scholarly and public-policy implications,” according to The Chronicle. Award recipients are also given a $2,000 prize.
Iozzio said she was “positively shocked” when she first learned that she was this year’s winner, mostly because she knew how competitive it has been to win the award the past two years and because of the fact that 2003’s award went to a Yale graduate and 2004’s award went to a graduate of Michigan State University. Both Yale and Michigan State have larger journalism programs than Fordham and also have student newspapers with higher circulation rates and publication frequencies than The Observer. According to The Chronicle, 170 students applied for the award this year.
Dr. Elizabeth Stone, faculty advisor to The Observer, said she is delighted that The Chronicle recognized Iozzio’s work.
“Corinne worked tirelessly and scrupulously on the research for the series of articles she submitted to The Chronicle’s competition,” Stone said. “It’s exciting to me, as the newspaper’s advisor, to see how a writer’s work can grow and develop during his or her undergraduate years, and this was certainly the case with Corinne. The Jesuit commitment to rigorous intellectual inquiry clearly fosters an atmosphere supportive of a similar mission in journalism.”
Iozzio said she is thankful to Stone for her guidance and for pushing her to become a better interviewer, researcher and writer. Iozzio added, “I didn’t know I was capable of all of that and, looking back now, I’m really proud of the way the articles turned out.”
During Iozzio’s tenure as editor in chief, The Observer won second place in the Newspaper of the Year competition sponsored by the Associated Collegiate Press. Iozzio’s articles that were submitted for the David W. Miller Award can be viewed at fordhamobserver.com in the Archive Extra section.
Founded in 1981, The Observer is the award-winning student newspaper of Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York. Recent honors include second place in the Associated Collegiate Press’ 2005 Newspaper of Year contest, first place in the American Scholastic Press Association’s 2005 Newspaper Review, third place in the Editorial category of the New York Press Association’s 2004 Better Newspaper Contest, and third place in both the Photography and Editorial categories of the New York Press Association’s 2003 Better Newspaper Contest.
Based at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan, The Observer’s circulation also reaches Fordham’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, making it available to more than 14,000 students in the University’s undergraduate colleges and graduate schools. The Observer begins its 25th Anniversary celebration in January 2006.
