With the journalism awards season wrapping up, the school’s journalism department has brought home many awards to commemorate all of their hard work throughout the school year and at the state contest.
Most recently, the department claimed the KSPA 6A sweepstakes state championship, the school’s 13th state title. The department had six first place finishers in categories such as Sports Writing, News Page Design and Advertising Design.
The state contests require members from Yearbook, Newspaper, Broadcast and Graphic Design classes to submit their work based on specific prompts given by the Kansas Scholastic Press Association.
Continuing the year’s success, Yearbook, Newspaper, Broadcast and Mill Valley News online were all named All-Kansas, making the school the only in the state to claim honors in all four publications.
JagWire Newspaper editor-in-chief Avery Clement was named KSPA’s designer of the year. The contest required Clement to submit a portfolio of her designs from previous newspaper issues. While Clement was surprised at her success, she believes she has certain skills that make her designs excellent.
“I was really happy that I won,” Clement said. “I don’t really know exactly what sets me apart, but in general, I think the way that I do [secondary graphics] is good and I’m good at using graphs and charts to show information in an organized way.”
The work staff members do all year for their publications helps them to prepare for competitions like state, where their skills are tested in different ways. For yearbook staff member Aniston Crabtree, who placed first in Yearbook Sports Writing, the state contests differ slightly from regular yearbook assignments.
“I feel like it’s hard to know whether you’re a good writer or not because writing is kind of subjective,” Crabtree said. “So it’s hard to write from a prompt when you didn’t interview the people and then turn it into a story, so I was kind of nervous about whether I would even place, but thankfully I did.”
While the journalism staff was surprised at their success, Crabtree understands that the work the staff does during the year helps to prepare them for these contests.
“We learn how to do it beforehand, in classes and you have upperclassmen teaching you, you have Habiger teaching you and we also just have a lot of resources to look back on,” Crabtree said. “So I think it’s great that we have all the resources here.”
The thing Clement appreciates most about the awards and state contests is that they give staff members recognition for the work they put in throughout the year.
“I think it’s really rewarding because a lot of times, especially with newspaper, we do a bunch of work, and then we kind of just move forward, and we don’t really acknowledge how well we did, but I feel like with awards we actually do recognize everybody,” Clement said. “It’s a way to show how hard everyone is working and how good our designs are and how good our work is.”
