Four seniors won a national certificate of merit for a column published in the online school newspaper.

The Columbia Scholastic Press Association, which hosted the contest, announced the 2014 yearbook and digital media category winners on Monday. The entries judged were written Nov. 2, 2012 through Nov. 1, 2013. The editors of the Eagle’s Tale submitted “The worst of both worlds, ignorance and war,” which placed in the top six in off-campus personal opinion category. 

“I was surprised that we won an award with that article because when we first wrote it, winning an award was never our intention,” co-editor-in-chief  Cortlyn Dees said. “We saw an issue that we thought we should write about, and I am very honored that it did win.”

The staff editorial, written by Kori Adair, Cortlyn Dees, Maisie Dyer and Josh Collins, focused on the news coverage of Miley Cyrus twerking instead of reporting  the conflict in Syria. The opinion column focused on how consumer demand drives media coverage, which sometimes elevates Hollywood news above international issues.

“The day after the awards show, the four of us could not stop talking about the media coverage of her performance,” co-editor-in-chief Kori Adair said. “Suddenly it hit us—we should just write an editorial explaining how we, as student journalists, felt about the amount of coverage of her performance compared to the coverage of Syrian conflict. We immediately sat down and developed the story.”

Adair said that she had to review the article after hearing that it had placed.

“It had been a few months since we wrote the story, so I couldn’t remember exactly what we had said,” Adair said. “After rereading the editorial, I felt proud of what we discussed in the article. We were passionate about informing consumers of their role in determining what the media covers. That passion strengthened our editorial and allowed our story to be relevant even after the twerking fiasco was long forgotten.”

The Eagle’s Tale has won a total of eight awards in the CSPA contest since 2009.

 “I was elated when I found out that our story had been named as an award-winner,” Adair said. “I’m proud of the strong story we submitted to the contest and the powerful points we made throughout the editorial. We were all so excited to receive recognition for a story we had put a lot of thought and effort into writing.”