King’s Student Wins Second Place for Best Column at the CMA Pinnacle Awards

Shannon Mason, Jackson Fordyce, and Jillian Cheney at the CMA Pinnacle Awards in Washington, DC. || Photo credit to Shannon Mason

The tech column for the Empire State Tribune was awarded Second Best Column at the National College Media Convention in Washington, D.C. this past weekend.

Jackson Fordyce, the author of Tech Talk, wrote headlines like “Should Google be Paying You?” and “Politicians Go After Amazon and Facebook” that ultimately led to his CMA Pinnacle Award.

Overall, the award ceremony had 3,407 total individual category entries from 246 colleges and universities, where 56 judges chose the winners. In first place for Best Column category was “The Threefold Advocate” from John Brown University. 

Fordyce is a Business Management major at the King’s College but has always shown an interest in technology — especially after watching “Silicon Valley”. 

|| Photo Credit to Shannon Mason

“[Tech] was interesting to me and that’s how it started,” Fordyce said. “I reported on relevant news in technology. Whether that is tech regulation or politicians wanting to disrupt free speech.”

Fordyce prepped his topic on technology ethics by reading publications like Wired, TechCrunch and he “listened to a lot of NPR podcasts about Antitrust Law.”

Technology ethics is a field of study that seeks to understand and resolve moral issues of the quickly growing development of technology. 

“It is an industry that is moving very quickly,” Fordyce said. “It something college students do not know a ton about it, so if I got the opportunity to learn about it, I should want to tell others about it.”