NorthbyNorthwestern.com took first place for Best All-Around Independent Online Student Publication and the print edition took second place for Best Student Magazine in the region covering Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.

Articles on the site took first, second and third places in the Online News Reporting category. First place went to Tom Giratikanon and Patrick St. Michel for “NBN at Dance Marathon 2008,” second place went to Giratikanon and Hannah Fraser-Chanpong for “Dillo Day 2008” and third place went to Jared T. Miller and “NU Decides caps off its voter registration effort.”

In the Online Feature Reporting category, Lauren C. Ruth won second place for her article “What it takes to be a bucket boy in Chicago,” and Dagny Salas won third for “The Cradle Adoption Agency doesn’t just change lives — it creates new ones.” Jason Plautz won first place in Online Opinion & Commentary for his “Why you should care” series.

St. Michel, Plautz, Giratikanon and Michael Lanning took first place in Online Sports Reporting for “North by Northwestern at the 2009 Alamo Bowl,” and the staff of North by Northwestern won first place in Online In-Depth Reporting for “Freshman Housing Guide 2008.”

Northwestern publications were well-represented at these awards. Stitch magazine won third place for Best Student Magazine. Medill senior Chris Gentilviso won several awards for sports writing, including second and third place in the Sports Writing category for “Avoiding injury by a neck” and “Worth the No. 1 Ranking?” written for The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and first place in Sports Column Writing for The Daily Northwestern. Medill graduate student A. Seraphina Lin won first place in the Television Feature category for “A special bond this Christmas: Brooke Wallace’s story“, published for the Medill News Service in Washington, D.C. Medill senior Katharine Euphrat won second place in Online In-Depth Reporting for “Let’s go home” for The Times while on her Journalism Residency in South Africa. Also, Medill seniors Jennifer L. Korducki and Kathleen M. de Onis recently won a second place College Television Award in the category of Newscasts for their work at the Northwestern News Network.

Staffers of North by Northwestern the Magazine painted today’s Rock to advertise the launch of their first issue. Copies are available at the Rock, Tech or Norris. For any sweet tooths out there, the group will also be selling muffins, lemonade and puppy chow by the Rock until 4 p.m. today.

Click here for a look at the new magazine’s Table of Contents.

That’s because our new design (version 2.0, for those of you counting)—sexy as it is—is suffering from some bugs on Microsoft’s browser, and there are some sections of the site that still need to be completely converted, including the forums and several blogs. We decided to put up the new design today even with these minor kinks because we wanted you to be able to enjoy the new look, and because most of the site is fully functional. All the minor problems should be ironed out within the next few days.

Tweaks to the actual look and placement of things, though, may extend through the next few months. We’re looking for your feedback on the redesign. How’s the new front page? Are parts of the site too crowded? Too much color? Not enough? Maybe Lucida Grande just ain’t your thing. Let us know by e-mail or simply leave a comment to this post.

My main goal since North by Northwestern started has been to make the site cleaner, easier to navigate and, well, hot. I hope this redesign is a step in that direction. We have moved the main site navigation to the top (with buttons that change color when you move your mouse over them!), making room for a wider article column and lots of fun features, like the handy list of regular columns on the front page.

Enjoy the new design. Just another thing I’m sure you were dying to cross off your holiday wish list.