How ‘The Lowell’ won awards at national high school journalism convention, including Multimedia Sports Story of the Year
Originally published on December 15, 2015
The National Scholastic Press Association recognized these six stories with Individual Awards in “Story of the Year,” “Multimedia Story of the Year” and “Picture of the Year” categories.
It was past 2 a.m. and 17 student journalists had just checked into their hotel rooms in Orlando. In less than five hours, they would be on the shuttle heading to a Disney World convention center for a national journalism conference, where they would challenge other high school journalists from around the country in timed writing, videography and broadcasting contests. This would be no typical Disney World trip.
The journalism delegation participated in the Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Orlando, Florida, from Nov. 12–15, where students attended sessions about online publishing and headline writing to photojournalism and Snapchat, competed in contests and won awards, including first place in Multimedia Sports Story of the Year.
Winning awards
The Lowell staff members won nine National Scholastic Press Association Individual Awards for pieces published in the 2014–2015 school year. Three pieces, including the first-place winner, placed in the “Multimedia Story of the Year” category, two stories were honored under the “Story of the Year” category and one picture placed in the “Picture of the Year” category.
The judges commented that the Multimedia Sports Story entries, including the winning entry from The Lowell, “How varsity boys’ basketball couldn’t rebound in the Battle of the Birds,” had fantastic videos, photographs and stories. They also “incorporated animated GIFs in their storytelling, and it worked brilliantly,” according to the NSPA Student Press website.
Senior Aida Irving, who worked on multimedia aspects of the package, expressed surprise that it won the award. Although the GIFs turned out well, the video’s lighting, shooting angle and framing were sometimes off, according to Irving. “That assignment was one of my first times ever taking sports videos, which I learned is very difficult,” she said.
Congrats to Aida Irving, Karina Huft & Danielle Flores of @thelowell, 1st place Multimedia Sports Story of the Year! https://t.co/Rz6bceZ101
— @NSPA
Another piece in the Multimedia Sports Story of the Year category won fifth place. Irving, alumna Ariel Yuan and alumna Zoe Kaiser teamed up with senior Rayming Liang, who wrote the story “Cross country outruns competition at Lowell Invite,” by filming, photographing and video editing.
The “Brunch on a student budget? Here’s where to find it.” story, covered during the brunch craze, placed in the Multimedia Feature Story of the Year category. “I felt that those different restaurants showed a little bit of the diversity of San Francisco,” junior Cynthia Leung, one of the reporters, said. “It was just fun to see what the hype was all about and investigate.”
Senior Lily Young enjoyed the experience as well, tagging along to take photos of the brunch dishes. “The first place we visited was Red Door Cafe, which is known for its eccentric owner and decor,” she said. “The owner is known to not let people in sometimes, so I was nervous that we wouldn’t get in and that I’d look too suspicious with a giant camera. But the owner was super nice. He was cool with me taking pictures.”
Seniors Stephanie Li, Luke Haubenstock, Amber Ly and Ivy La rounded out the multimedia aspects of the article by reporting, editing, photographing and web designing, respectively.
Congrats to Cynthia, Luke & Stephanie for winning fifth place in Multimedia Feature Story of the Year! #nhsjc @NSPA
“New online state testing brings technical difficulties, turning three days into four weeks” received fifth place under the category News Story of the Year. Senior Joseph Kim, a reporter for the article, felt motivated to cover the issue because he experienced the testing problems firsthand. “Answering the questions that put the administration into question and whether such a problem could have been avoided was difficult,” he said. “We really wanted to dig deep and ask the questions that investigated why these things actually happened and why students had to suffer the long testing.”
From covering the technological mishaps to the test itself, Kim and his fellow reporter, senior JoyAnne Ibay, felt burnt out while finishing the interviewing and drafting. “We didn’t even want the story anymore, but our adviser, Mr. Williams, kept pushing us to complete it,” she said. “I couldn’t believe how much work we put into that story, but I’m thankful because it got us fifth place in a national news story competition.”
Congrats to Joy and Joseph for winning fifth place for Story of the Year for their testing news story! #nhsjc @NSPA
Junior Ophir Cohen-Simayof felt that the biggest challenge to covering and editing “What’s right and wrong with the anonymous Facebook page ‘Lowell Confessions,’” which placed under Editorial/Opinion Story of the Year, was handling backlash from the anonymous page administrators. “It was very hard to respond to them in a professional manner,” she said. “Ultimately, the story reaffirmed my faith in writing opinion pieces because I knew that I couldn’t conquer the problem on my own, but that getting people talking and thinking was the first step to actually solving the issue.”
Congrats to Ophir and Danielle for an honorable mention in Editorial/Opinion Story of the Year! #nhsjc @NSPA
The sixth individual award that a The Lowell staff member received was News Picture of the Year for Zoe Kaiser’s photo in “Hello, Dolly: Star alum Carol Channing brings smiles to students.”
Performing under pressure
In write-off contests at the convention, seniors Whitney C. Lim, Clarissa Wan and Samantha Sicairos received certificates for Superior rating in Newswriting, Superior rating in Commentary Writing and honorable mention in Broadcast Newswriting, respectively.
“Since it was around 4:30 p.m., I was very sleepy too, so I’m crediting adrenaline for winning that medal.”
Although all the competition atmospheres differed, Lim competed in one of the biggest rooms and with hundreds of other student journalists. “The newswriting and editorial/opinion write-offs were in the same room, with everyone listening to the same presenter,” she said. “We sat at those Chinese-restaurant, round 10-person tables and I could barely see the projection slides from where I was sitting. I also didn’t even have paper to write on but thankfully someone let me borrow a few sheets. Since it was around 4:30 p.m., I was very sleepy too, so I’m crediting adrenaline for winning that medal.”
Wan estimated that she had slept about three hours during the night before the day of the contest. “I’m glad I won the award, after sacrificing so much sleep,” she said. “I don’t think I’m a great impromptu writer, so winning something, a Superior ranking no less, felt like something that showed I improved.”
Sicairos had been nervous and excited to compete on a national level. “I was really surprised when I received honorable mention because I didn’t think I would even compare to other contestants, especially since this is my first semester in journalism and we don’t have a broadcasting aspect,” she said.
Convention takeaways
One major takeaway from the convention was to take on the challenge of improving The Lowell. Junior Olivia Starr, a reporter, learned that that could be “expanding the way we use social media or pushing the envelope a little bit more using something like satire or even just upping the frequency of articles we publish.”
“I sat there listening to her talk about Paris and Donald Trump and I realized that that is the job of a journalist: to give people something to talk about, and to make sure that their voices are heard.”
This semester was sophomore Tobi Kawanami’s first enrolled in journalism. “The convention really helped open my eyes to the different careers and futures with journalism,” she said. “I learned a lot of photography and video journalism tips but I was also able to go to other workshops that interested me like creative advertising and social media workshops. I also loved the college booths at the convention. It put a lot of schools on my radar that I might not have considered before.”
One seminar in particular, Poynter reporter Kristen Hare’s “From Ferguson to Paris: Reporting and Social Media Around the World,” stood out to Cohen-Simayof. “I sat there listening to her talk about Paris and Donald Trump and I realized that that is the job of a journalist: to give people something to talk about, and to make sure that their voices are heard,” she said.
Leung found Emmy-winning professor and digital media manager Max Negin, who covered multiple Olympic Games, an informative speaker. “I liked how he told his personal story,” she said. “When he’d just gotten out of college, he worked at a local publication where he only wrote three stories a year and had to have another part-time job. It took him about six years to get a stable job.”
Both chaperones, English teacher and former journalism adviser Sharn Matusek and choir teacher Jason Chan, thought that the trip went smoothly. Students were cooperative, although transportation was a slightly dysfunctional, according to Matusek.
The convention trip was partially funded with grants of over $9,000 from the Lowell Alumni Association and over $2,000 from the Parent-Teacher-Student Association. Printing The Lowell’s newsmagazine issues are funded through students’ advertisement sales.
Whitney C. Lim, Emily Teng and Sophia Wu contributed to this article.
