April NUI Galway Scoops Top Gong at National Student Media Awards

University students win three awards including Editor and Newspaper of the Year

NUI Galway’s students were presented with three awards at the National Student Media Awards on Thursday night. Hosted by Oxygen.ie, the National Student Media Awards, or SMedias as they are known, are in their 19th Year and honour Ireland’s best young talent in media.

NUI Galway’s student newspaper Sin was awarded College Newspaper of the Year. The bi-weekly publication has a circulation of 6,000 and is staffed by students from a variety of courses. The newspaper of the year award is sponsored by The Irish Times whose editors helped to judge this year’s submissions.

Bachelor of Arts with Journalism student Áine Kenny took home the Irish Independent’s highly competitive Editor of the Year award. The 21-year-old journalist from Dundalk, Co. Louth, is the editor of Sin newspaper, which is the University’s only college publication.

Baitsiléir sna Dána – Cumarsáid (Bachelor of Arts - Communications) student Amy Coy from Loughrea, Co. Galway was present with the Iriseoireacht trí Ghaeilge – Raidió award.

Speaking after the award, Áine Kenny said that the win would not have been possible without the Sin team. “The award for newspaper of the year, and editor of the year, was made possible by the wonderful team of volunteers we have working on the paper. This is a group production where everyone plays a part, from our writers, our stellar editorial team, our Deputy Editor Martha and our graphic designer Shannon. I also want to thank the Students’ Union for their continued support and Tom Felle of the Journalism department. Hopefully there will be many more awards to come.”

Professor Cathal O’Donoghue, Dean of the College of Arts, Social Science and Celtic Studies at NUI Galway, congratulated Ms Kenny and all the other students who were part of team that won awards at the SMedias: “This is a wonderful achievement for Áine and all the student journalists involved in SIN, the student newspaper. These major awards – best student newspaper in the country, best editor, and best Irish language radio documentary – demonstrate the high calibre of learning in our journalism and cumarsáid programmes at NUI Galway. The University has a long history of producing top quality journalism graduates. The University has recently re-launched our journalism programmes and a new BA Journalism and MA Sports Journalism programmes will launch next September.”

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