By Megan Hatch

David Mortimer was supposed to write for The Daily Universe football beat when he found himself covering a Utah Flash basketball event.

“There wasn’t anyone else available to cover the story,” said Mortimer of his article revealing the Utah Flash hoax wherein Michael Jordan did not appear to expectant basketball fans. “I took the assignment on a whim.”

That whim assignment earned Mortimer a first place prize from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), an honor, that Mortimer says he never expected.

Like Mortimer, most of The Daily Universe SPJ award winners said they didn’t expect to win anything for their work. Yet, of the 28 categories entered, The Daily Universe was awarded 24 honors.

Kaye Nelson, editorial lab manager for the paper, said that receiving this many awards was definitely, “not bad for a year’s worth of work.”

In addition to first-place awards for The Daily Universe Facebook page and a graphic design entry from the New Student Orientation issue, 10 students garnered first-place wins for articles, opinions, a podcast and photos.

According to Nelson, The Daily Universe wins awards because the students who write for the paper are “cream of the crop, great students with a desire to write interesting, in-depth articles.”

One of these “cream of the crop” students is The Daily Universe reporter Leah Wasson, who received an SPJ award for her story examining election district divisions in the Provo area.  Wasson said that writing her article during election season made it a, “timely and ‘hot button’ issue to cover.”

Another Daily Universe reporter, Tyler Weaver, took first place for an article review of a local band that had been generating a lot of buzz.

“It was an exciting piece for me to write because the music industry has always been of great interest to me and I was given a great opportunity to fuse a personal passion with an educational experience,” Weaver said.

While all of The Daily Universe winners agreed that writing quality news stories is first priority, receiving awards for their work is always a plus.

“Our main job is to report news, and to do it well.  Any awards after that are just secondary,” said David Mortimer, Daily Universe reporter.