From left: Tennessee Golden Press Card Award winners Trevor Jolley, Lexi Foley, Caleb McCool, Megan Cooper, Maleah Holder and Mallori Crocker. Photo courtesy of Dr. Erin Ryan.
Inside the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Department of Communication, students spend countless hours working on projects ranging from news articles to documentaries—work that has been earning national recognition for years.
On May 15, they broke their own record at the Tennessee Golden Press Card Awards, with seven students placing either first or second in the competition’s 12 student categories.
Because all entries had to be from 2024, many of the winning students had already graduated. Of UTC’s seven honorees, the only current student is rising junior Mallori Crocker, a communication major from Bowling Green, Kentucky.
“Everyone has graduated, but I was a sophomore,” Crocker said, referring to when she wrote her winning stories. “I went from a staff writer my sophomore year to, all of a sudden, editor-in-chief of The University Echo my junior year.”
After traveling to Knoxville, Tennessee, for the award ceremony, Crocker won Best Continuing Coverage for her work reporting on the 2024 presidential election.
“It was a little stressful when I started doing election coverage because I had gone from being a feature writer—and I was told that my writing was sometimes a little funky—to now winning awards for my writing,” Crocker said.
Alongside Crocker, recent graduate Trevor Jolley worked his way up at The University Echo, starting as a writer and photographer before becoming sports editor. He capped his UTC career with three first-place awards: sports beat reporting, sports reporting and best sports photography.
“If something has my name on it, even if it is not good, I know at the end of the day I put 100% effort into it,” Jolley said. “These awards do not feel like I am being recognized for talent but for hard work.”
Looking back on Jolley’s winning story for sports reporting, former University Echo sports editor and December 2024 graduate Lexi Foley remembers editing the story with him and proudly watched him accept his awards.
“(Jolley) swept the sports section for the student paper category, and it was really sweet to see the fruits of all of our work and all of his hard work pay off for him,” Foley said.
While serving as sports editor of The University Echo, Foley was also editor-in-chief of the Department of Communication’s Rising Rock publication, where she created “Chain Breakers,” the story that earned her first place for best feature story.
Now working on a master’s degree in secondary education, Foley recognized that her time as a communication student and journalist has given her more confidence in herself and her future.
“Journalism has helped me to understand people better, which for teaching is going to be super helpful because I’ll be able to see different perspectives,” Foley said.
Before Foley’s time as editor-in-chief of Rising Rock, May 2024 graduate Maleah Holder served as an editor when the publication covered the 2024 solar eclipse. As part of that series, she wrote “Sun-Less Soiree,” which earned second place for best news coverage.
A year after graduating from UTC, Holder was excited to reunite with old classmates at the awards celebration while being able to celebrate their accomplishments together.
“It was incredible to see everyone from UTC receive well-earned recognition for their hard work and I know it won’t stop there,” Holder said. “I feel very proud of the work I completed in college, but most of all, the award made me realize just how much my writing has grown from when I started my degree to where I am now.”
Other UTC winners included:
- May 2024 graduate Caleb McCool, who won Best News Photography for his work on a Rising Rock story about the aftermath of a tornado that tore through Henagar, Alabama, in spring 2024.
- Recent graduate Megan Cooper won first place for podcasting for her work leading audio production on a collection of Rising Rock packages.
- Recent graduate Connor Spelta won first place for best news coverage for his Rising Rock story “Dirty Dirt.”
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