About a dozen members of the Spoke's staff will head to DC this weekend for the annual JEA/NSPA Scholastic Journalism convention. Highlights of the weekend include participation in a seminar on ethics and a celebration: two of our editors are receiving SPLC's Courage in Journalism Award. Henry Rome and Seth Zweifler are also up for numerous national awards for their reporting.
Temple journalism professor Dr. Tom Eveslage will lead a session on ethics at the NSPA/JEA convention in Washington next month. The Spoke's editor-in-chief, managing editor and the two advisers will engage in a panel discussion, focusing on ethical decision-making in the high school news room.
As is the custom (at least for the past four years or so), alum of Good Morning 'Stoga and Main Line Morning will return to the airwaves the week before winter break. I'm hoping for a good turn out this year!
The Spoke is a finalist in the NSPA 2009 Newspaper Pacemaker contest. Conestoga's student paper is one of 17 finalists in the 17-pages-or-more category. This year's contest was judged by a group of Seattle area professional journalists. Entries were judged on coverage and content, writing and reporting, leadership on the opinion page, in-depth reporting, layout and design, and photos/art/graphics. The winner will be announced at the JEA/NSPA convention in November. This level of recognition is a first for The Spoke.
Today NSPA released the Story of the Year finalists. Spoke reporters were acknowledged in four categories: Feature story: "Carrying Hope," by Seth Zweifler; News story: "Obligation to Report," by Henry Rome; Diversity story: "Coming Out in the Classroom," by Seth Zweifler; and Multimedia story: "On the Streets," by Henry Rome. According to NSPA's news release, judges selected finalists based on the following criteria:
Recent grad and former editor-in-chief Henry Rome is up for best news photo of the year from NSPA. The photo captures the mood at last fall's World Series celebration parade in Philadelphia. Current design editor Gabriela Epstein is one of three cartoonists competing for best cartoon strip of the year.
The Columbia Scholastic Press Association award the Gold Medalist Certificate to The Spoke.
The paper received All Columbian Honors (special merit) for Coverage, Writing and Editing, Graphic Presentation and Business. This means that The Spoke received All Columbian Honors for EVERY category -- this special merit is given to publications that achieve the 95th percentile or higher in each category.
Former Spoke sports reporter Kurt Rohrbeck didn't waste time getting involved with his college newspaper. Kurt, now a freshman at Wash U, is covering sports for Student Life. His most recent article is about the university's women's golf team. Student Life is published three times a week.
I enjoy reading Philadelphia Magazine's "Best of" edition each summer: it's good to know where you can find the best cheese steak, the best breakfast (yay Nudy's!), and the best day spa. So it was really cool to check out this month's edition where the mag celebrates local schools "that are the best at what they do."
When researchers from the magazine called me this summer to get some info on The Spoke, they told me there would be a write-up on our school's paper in the "back-to-school" issue of the publication. I had no idea that The Spoke would be recognized as "Best Student Newspaper" in the region. Here's what the editors had to say: "Nationally recognized and award-winning, Conestoga's seasoned journalists learn to tackle serious topics -- growing up gay, teen pregnancy, swine flu, illegal gambling -- for their published-seven-times-a-year paper and even richer, ever-updating website, Stoganews.com."
Awesome.
NSPA has awarded First Class status to both the print and Web editions of the Spoke. NSPA cited the following as strengths of The Spoke newspaper: treatment of feature topics, organization of sections. The NSPA judge cited the following as the strengths of stoganews.com: depth and breadth of coverage targeted to student life, fun features catering to students, links to blogs with relevant content and compelling writing.
Former Spoke editor Saiontoni Sarkar, now a student at Duke University, had a letter to the editor published in the New York Times. She discusses the dangers of talking on a cell phone while driving.
