Austin speaking:

Boy, has this been a busy week or what? This week, Kristina, Hanna and I have been working on various contest entries for JEMKC (Journalism Educators of Metropolitan Kansas City). One of the contest involves submitting individual entries of our staff’s best work. This includes categories such as news story, feature story, sports story, page design, sports photography, feature photography and so on. We also applied for a leadership award for which we had to pick out articles that demonstrated the JagWire staff informing its readers and influencing them to do something. Next to this, Hanna and I applied for scholarships offered through JEMKC and had to submit portfolios, so we sure have had our plates full. I think I can vouch for all three of us when I say it was pretty cool getting to take a look back at this year’s work so far and seeing what awesome things we have published. Now it’s time for rest before Monday’s long worknight.

Kristina speaking:

If you read our blog from last week, you know that we tagged on an extra week for this deadline due to the snow days. But we didn’t realize how much of a necessity this extra week would be. Every year, we submit articles and designs to JEMKC for awards or scholarships. We had to go through our previous issues to pick our best stories to submit. In addition to the work we did with JEMKC entries, our boys and girls basketball teams both were also state finalists. If we hadn’t pushed the issue for another week, we wouldn’t have been able to cover the results of the teams. We sent our photographers and writers to report on the story and we’re proud to say that both our boys and girls teams placed at state. After one crazy week, it’s time to finish issue six and send it to the press!

Hanna speaking:

As Austin said, the week of JEMKC has been crazy. We’ve been focusing so much on getting those entries ready that I can’t even believe long worknight is this Monday. Beyond all of the journalism contests that are going on this week, the boys and girls basketball teams are both playing in the state tournament. So, because we want everyone to know what’s going on, we’ve been live tweeting from all the games and posting stories and photo galleries within a few hours of each game ending. Oh, and for some reason, teachers still think it’s OK to give us homework.

Even thought it’s been crazy, I can’t even describe the excitement of this week. It’s hard to write a story about the girls playing in the state championship without writing, “OMG. Sew awesome.” I guess I’ll have to restrain myself.