Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: St. Edward's University Entry Title: Hilltop Views Entry Credit: Claire Lawrence Judge Comment: Nicely organized homepage with clear hierarchy of top stories in each category, appealing layout, appropriate use of subtle hover effects. Site menus and sub-menus extremely well organized. Well thought out headlines incorporate search-friendly keywords and give a good picture of the content to help viewers decide to read further. Individual article pages have very clean layout, good use of images, "about the author" blocks, and very easy to read. "Photo Stories" section with galleries is sure to be a very popular one with readers. Excellent gallery presentation. Nice use of homepage corrections submission form, "When we get it wrong, we correct our mistake," way to own it. Comprehensive about us section, good introduction to staff members.
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Texas Wesleyan University Entry Title: The Rambler Entry Credit: Rambler Staff Judge Comment: Nice homepage with featured top story and featured articles in main categories. Prominent placement of selected videos from your "Rambler TV" news program. Good use of cross-reference tags and mega menu dropdowns with featured images and headlines. Well structured layout throughout the site.
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Tyler Junior College Entry Title: The DrumBeat Entry Credit: The DrumBeat Staff Judge Comment: Homepage featured articles block and category section blocks give a good overview of what readers can find inside the site. Each category page having its own featured articles block at the top is a nice touch. (Technical note, the puzzle solutions I tried wouldn't load for me, just the general "puzzles" image.)
Place Name: Honorable Mention Contestant Name: Northeast Texas Commmunity College Entry Title: The Eagle Online - Northeast Texas Community College Entry Credit: Eagle Staff Judge Comment: Clean layout, nice placement of the featured videos. Some tips for development though: Would like to see a featured articles spotlight on the homepage. Pages under development like the blogs could be removed from the menu and left in draft mode until content is added. Use web optimized photos so images on pages, like the staff page, will load faster. You've got lots of great content here, and a few tweaks to the presentation will help bring your website to the next level.
Competition Comment: The future of journalism is bright! Very professional looking websites being developed.
