Viola Flowers, the 2023-2024 editor-in-chief of The Statesman, is the 2024 winner of the Martin Buskin Award for Outstanding Campus Journalism.
Flowers received a check for $1,000 and was cited at the School of Communication and Journalism’s Majors and Minors Banquet. Her name will also be added to the plaque in the Newsroom that bears the names of Buskin Award winners since 1977.
Flowers previously held roles as managing editor and assistant news editor.
During her tenure, The Statesman rebuilt its advertising structure and relationships with local businesses, redesigned its website and returned to monthly printed editions after ceasing production during the pandemic. She also ran the Student Blood Drive Committee, holding 19 blood drives on campus that collected blood donations to save up to 8,000 lives.
Off campus, Viola has held internships at NBC Dateline, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and Times-Review Media Group on the North Fork of Long Island.
Flowers was the first-ever Stony Brook recipient of an Overseas Press Club Foundation award in 2023 and will be joining this year’s Journalism Without Walls trip with two other students this May to report on child trafficking in Nepal. She will be returning to NBC as a news associate in September.