The Columbia Scholastic Press Association recognized the Collegian for a number of things in its yearly Crown Awards. The CSPA is a prestigious institution, and the paper did quite well. Congrats! (We’d throw them a party or something if we made any money… maybe they could lend us the James Building for a weekend?)

The Daily Collegian’s website was awarded a Gold Crown (don’t think there’s an actual hat though) in the College Online Newspaper category.

The Collegian was also picked as having the best design for a news website.

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The Collegian’s website and multimedia content don’t really do it for us yet, but the paper is definitely doing better than many others. At least the Collegian doesn’t use the clunky/chunky College Publisher CMS.

We wish they could get some inspiration from papers like The Daily Princetonian or The Yale Daily News. The paper’s multimedia content is also lacking in production value– the plain opening it uses for every video is dull (and what’s with the long, stationary shots?). Additionally, we know it’s using high quality equipment– why doesn’t the paper preserve the quality of the content when they publish it online? Maybe a switch of codec or player is in order. We’re still waiting for a sustained and focused blogging initiative too. For more, check out this list of 15 things the Collegian can do to adapt to the changing media landscape.

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The Collegian’s paper edition was awarded a Silver Crown (the second highest honor) in the College Newspaper category for the Fall 2007 semester, which was pretty long ago, definitely before the current leadership was installed.

The only papers to be honored with either a Gold or Silver Crown for both their online and print editions are The Daily Collegian, The Daily Pennsylvanian, and The Ithacan, which is definitely impressive. The Collegian is in a tougher situation than many newspapers, because even though its advertising revenues are down, most of its readers still read the print edition rather than the online edition.

Check out the rest after the jump.

The Columbia Scholastic Press Association also recognized some specific Collegian content in its awards.

Heather Schmelzen’s article on THON 2008 breaking the previous year’s fundraising total was chosen as the second best piece of newswriting.

Katharine Lackey’s article about Penn State alumna Valerie Plame was chosen as the second best personality profile.

A photo by Abby Drey was chosen as the best black and white feature photograph. We couldn’t find it on the website though.

Erin Prah’s video about the aftermath of a car crash on College Avenue was chosen as the best video. Additionally, a video by Prah, Drey, and Erin Rowley about the return of the original Willard Preacher was chosen as the second best video in that same category. These were pretty good videos– haven’t seen many other college newspapers producing much content like that yet.