AND THE WINNER IS …:.

This article presents the first and last campus journalism awards as selected by the author. This year's finest campus newspaper in Canada, according to me, is Quartier Libre at the Université de Montréal. And since one of the runners-up is the Link, from neighbouring Concordia University, the one-member jury of the First (and Last) Back Page Campus Journalism Awards has decided to crown Montreal as the capital of campus journalism in Canada. Both papers achieve quality by doing something that hasn't occurred to most Canadian campus papers: they take their time. Several weeks ago on my weblog I asked for samples of Canadian campus newspapers. Student scribes across the country hurried to comply, and it's been great fun to read their work. At the University of Saskatchewan, Drew Larson shot an amazing cover photo of the Arcade Fire for the Sheaf: two musicians with faces tilted up, mouths open in identical Os. Today's campus papers have too many opinion columns by students who had nothing new to say. Nobody in Canada is doing anything in English to match Quartier Libre.