The HawkEye honored for library-weeding coverage

Reporter Logan R. Hullinger

By The HawkEye staff

INDIANA — The HawkEye’s 2017 coverage of a contentious plan to remove more than a third of the books in the Indiana University of Pennsylvania library was honored today by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association in its annual Keystone Awards for collegiate journalism.

Between September and December, reporter Logan R. Hullinger wrote four stories about the proposed library-weeding — supporters call it “de-accessioning” — and the opposition to it.

IUP administrators appointed a roughly 10-member task force to study the issue. The group met twice before the start of the spring semester, and additional meetings were scheduled, according to a source close to the process who spoke off the record on Jan. 23.

The controversy attracted the attention of the Associated Press, which published a Feb. 7 story that ran in newspapers in the United Kingdom and around the United States.

 
THE LATEST KEYSTONE AWARD continues a string of honors dating to 2005 that have flowed from the statewide press association to the digital online newspaper and the IUP journalism program. Stories published by The HawkEye have been submitted nine times to the annual Keystone competition. Each time they have won awards.

The Keystone contest pits IUP’s journalism program against similar programs at larger Pennsylvania universities, including Temple, Penn State, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pennsylvania.

Hullinger, a senior journalism major, said he was gratified.

“It’s an honor to be recognized again for The HawkEye’s journalistic efforts,” he wrote in a Feb. 14 email. “The fact that we can place among larger universities such as Temple and Penn State speaks wonders to the education and training that our journalism department provides.”

He concluded:

“I’m glad that I can end my education on a strong note by having the hard work we do recognized by an organization that carries a lot of weight in the Pennsylvania journalism community,” Hullinger wrote. “I’m confident that other students will be able to continue to represent the university through ethical, hard-hitting journalism that is more important now than ever before.”