They already received one of college journalism's top honors from the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation for Human Rights.
But on Tuesday night, 11 student journalists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Journalism and Mass Communications took home the grand prize from the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards in Washington, D.C.
It's the first time in the 49-year history of the prize the award has been given to a college group, placing them above other division winners including National Geographic, HBO, The New Yorker and Univision.
The UNL team's in-depth multimedia project "The Wounds of Whiteclay: Nebraska's Shameful Legacy" detailed the issues surrounding the small Nebraska town that sells 3.5 million cans of beer annually, mostly to Native Americans from the neighboring Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
People are also reading…
Joe Starita, the UNL journalism professor and an editor on the project, said the students poured in hundreds of hours interviewing, photographing and writing about the issues Whiteclay has created.
"This is an exceptional feat of journalism at any level, and the resulting package is one in which every Nebraska taxpayer got their money's worth," Starita said in a statement.
Students working on the project, including senior journalism major Chris Bowling -- a former Journal Star intern -- said it was "absolutely insane" to be recognized among the nation's top journalistic outlets.
"These are journalists we look up to and aspire to be like," Bowling said.
Other reporters contributing to the project include Lauren Brown-Hulme, Vanessa Daves, Marcella Mercer, Alyssa Mae and Natasha Rausch, while current and former Journal Star interns Amber Baesler, Jake Crandall, Calla Kessler and James Wooldridge provided photography. Matt Hanson designed the project's website at .