St. John’s School Students Honored at the National High School Journalism Convention

(Back row, from left) David Nathan, Jared Margolis, Christian Maines, Gabe Malek, Matthew Neal, Sadde Mohamed, Michael Vermeulen, Chris Zimmerman.
(Front row, from left) Brooke Kushwaha, Irene Vazquez, Cara Maines, Emma Shea, Grace Amandes, Ashwini Bandi, Sophie Li, Amy Liu. (Photo:Kemberley Kemp)
 

From Nov. 12-14, student journalists from around the country flocked to Orlando, FL to participate in the fall National High School Journalism Convention. Fourteen of our editors along with one staffer from our St. John’s School newspaper The Review made the trip. After one day of relaxation and two days of conferences and lectures, our team came back with new insights on journalistic writing and design.

On Thursday, our contingent spent the day at Walt Disney World, as the bulk of the sessions were to take place on Friday and Saturday. That day, we rode the roller coasters of the Magic Kingdom and enjoyed overpriced (though admittedly satisfying) amusement park food from themed restaurants. While I never visited Disney World as a child, I definitely understand the appeal - it’s a magical place.

“I hadn't been to Disneyworld since I was 6, so being able to return with my friends was incredibly fun,” senior and copy editor Michael Vermeulen said. “It was an exhilarating way to spend a day before attending the informative journalism conferences of the next couple days.

The next day, we woke up early and went to our first sessions. I attended a lecture from Audrey Wagstaff Cunningham of Hiram College, who presented on the history of censorship in student journalism, namely the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, Tinker v. Des Moines, and Morse v. Frederick Supreme Court cases, all of which involved the first amendment rights of students. After grabbing lunch and visiting a number of interesting presentations on generating ideas and being a more effective editor, we, as a group, listened to a keynote address by Eric Deggans, NPR’s first full-time TV critic, who spoke on the topics of race and sexuality as they relate to reporting and the modern media. We went back to our rooms shortly afterwards and took a break before heading off to dinner at Paradiso 37.

“It was really great to meet some student journalists from other schools,” junior and photo editor Jared Margolis said.

The next day, we split up to go to a number of sessions in the morning, mostly concerning the same topics. As an editor who works frequently on brainstorming and revising features articles, I along with some other editors went to a session hosted by Maggie Cogar of Kent State University, where Cogar gave advice on those topics.

After a few more sessions, we hopped on a bus back to the airport with our bags, knowing that we had to miss the awards ceremony to make our flight (which we nearly missed), but on the way through security, we found out via Twitter that we had won NSPA’s National Pacemaker Award, widely recognized as the highest honor awarded to student newspapers.