Media classes win awards in DC

Mary Kate Eckles
December 4, 2009
Filed under News

From Nov. 13-15 more than 6,000 newspaper, broadcast and yearbook high school students from around the country participated in the JEA/NSPA (Journalism Education Association/ National Scholastic Press Association) convention in Washington, DC. One of the main events at the convention is the write-offs.

Write-offs recognize excellence in many categories of writing, photography and design for yearbook and journalism.

Students have two hours to write or design an article or layout based on the prompt and information given to them at the beginning of the competition.

It was announced after judging that five of the nine Corona students who had entered had won.

“I was very proud of myself,” said Junior Tatum Hartwig, News editor of the Sunrise and first time write-offs competitor.

Hartwig won an honorable mention for her three-and-a-half page story about the Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry for the feature writing section. In her write-offs, the students interviewed AIDS survivors about how they contracted the disease, how they live with it and what they were doing now to help others with the disease.

Editor-in-Chief of the Sunrise newspaper, senior Janae Mari, also won an honorable mention for her commentary on the use of tasers as an alternative to guns by police officers on school campuses.

“I argued the use of tasers in school was outrageous and the use of guns was ridiculous too,” Mari said.

She was given first-hand accounts of officers using tasers and guns on minors to write the article.

For the review write-off, Special Projects editor for the Sunrise newspaper and junior Bree Purdy watched a live, four-act, 30-minute play about the 60’s promently featuring the social issues of the Vietnam War. A local high school drama class performed the play.

“They performed live without any props or a set,” Purdy said.

Purdy enjoyed the play and got an excellence in review writing award for her story.

Junior April Rodriguez, Sunset yearbook digital editor, won an honorable mention for her story on an agricultural/farming club from a made-up high school.

One of the challenges of write-offs is “You have to make your own angle and story,” Rodriguez said.

In Write-offs, a writer is expected to write a memorable story, while about a hundred other writers are writing on the exact same thing.

The JEA/NSPA convention isn’t all about write-offs though, it also showcases hundreds of one to two hour classes for teachers and students. The classes started Friday morning and ended on Saturday afternoon.

There are noticeably more classes for newspaper and yearbook than TV production and broadcast journalism.

“TV production is a growing field,” said Ben Forbes, social studies and [cdstv] teacher “there will be more in the future.”

The next JEA/NSPA convention will be held in Portland, Ore. in April.