The Nashville convention brought another round of awards to my students. The newspaper earned its third straight national Pacemaker Award, the highest honor in scholastic journalism. The paper also placed fifth in the Best of Show contest for papers with more than 16 pages. The 2006 edition of the yearbook earned fourth place in its page-count category of 275-324. That’s the highest placing ever for our school’s yearbook.
One student, the newspaper’s editor in chief, earned an “excellent” rating in the on-site contest for commentary writing. The topic was how music downloading was hurting artists and performers.
The Best of Show and Write-Off contests are always a toss-up as far as I am concerned. We’ve had great products and talented students come away with no awards, and we’ve had some surprises, too. But I was starting to sweat the Pacemaker announcement. This year six Washington state news publications were among the 55 finalists. Typically about half the finalists are named Pacemakers, announced in no particular order. Four Washington finalists were named winners right away in the announcements but not us. I waited as several more were called and finally our name was read. I admit that I would have been disappointed to have not been named this year – one, because I believe the work was the best my students have done, and, two, because it is tough to lose when you’re sitting right next to all the winners. Also, during Best of Show for newspaper, just as I said as an aside to my colleague that things did not look good for placing, my school’s name was called. Ironic.
Three in a row is also an achievement of which I am particularly proud. I am glad it shows sustained excellence and I think at this point the newspaper’s reputation for string journalism can be cemented not just with people who know what a Pacemaker is or who support free expression but with casual readers and with those without long-term or close knowledge. It’s a reward and a validation of effort and toil. And it feels pretty darn good.
-- Composed in the airspace over the Midwest (posted from Issaquah, Wash.)
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6 comments:
So the yearbook placed higher than the newspaper...interesting...
You guys deserve it for the great work you do. Congratulations.
FIVE Pacemaker winners from Washington is just unreal -- no other state had more than three. Pretty awesome.
And I think it shows that all the hard work we've all put in (especially people like you) to make this state a better place for scholastic journalism continues to pay off.
Great job, Logan. I'm constantly amazed by all that you do and all that you accomplish.
I think that because last year's wa wa staff was so bad ass, we deserve an alum day. We got fourth at nationals, come on man!
I concur.
Logan, it's Bobby. What's going on? Your blog appears to be dead! That is crap!
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