The Six Mile Post staff won several awards at the Georgia College Press Association’s Press Institute in Athens Feb. 15.

The Six Mile Post staff won second place in feature writing. Individual award-winners included Catie Sullivan, editor-in-chief, second place in sports photography; Nick Whitmire, managing editor online, third place in investigative news; James Alewine, staff writer, third place in column writing; and Joseph McDaniel, managing editor of design, third place for editorial writing and second for entertainment feature.

Some former Six Mile Post staffers also won awards. Moises Ledesma received first place in the entertainment feature category. Michael McClain, Latonya Kilgore and Jeimy Celon-Alcantara received second place in column writing.

The seminars presented at the conference included a variety of speakers from different colleges and journalism backgrounds.

The last panel of the day was the Watchdog of the Year competition, where different schools presented investigative news stories from their campuses and competed to win the overall award.

Attending the Press Institute from Georgia Highlands were Sullivan, McDaniel, Whitmire, Chief Photographer Kayley Agan, Assistant Online Editor Olivia Fortner and staff members Michelle Hardin and Josh Maddox.

At the end of February, Six Mile Post representatives also attended the Southern Regional Press Institute at Savannah State. There they attended seminars focused on journalism and entertainment, with a running theme being diversity. The staff members that attended were Sullivan, McDaniel, and Whitmire.

The keynote speaker was Tatia Adams Fox, vice president of global partnerships for Nickelodeon, who discussed the advancements diversity has made in recent years and how far society still needs to go in order for everyone to get proper representation.

At the awards banquet, SMP sports writer Trevor Gonzales won second place for best sports writing.