On Thursday, the National Scholastic Press Association named the upper school newspaper The Winged Post a Pacemaker Award finalist in the High School Newspaper/Newsmagazine category. The newspaper is one of 60 finalists chosen from 190 students publications that entered the competition. The 24 Pacemaker winners will be announced at a virtual ceremony on Nov. 21.
Three teams of judges exhaustively reviewed all of this year’s entries, which fell into three categories: Middle School/Junior High Newspaper/Newsmagazine, High School Newspaper/Newsmagazine and Specialty magazine. Publications were evaluated in areas including coverage, writing, design and photography.
Harker journalism students spent Nov. 19-23 in Washington, D.C., attending the Journalism Education Association and National Scholastic Press Association’s Fall High School Journalism Convention, where the Winged Post newspaper received an NSPA Pacemaker award.
The upper school’s Winged Post newspaper was awarded the Pacemaker for the 2018-19 school year, which was the third Pacemaker in journalism department history, following a 2016 win for the upper school news website, Aquila, and the Winged Post’s first Pacemaker win in 2008. The Winged Post was one of just 19 school publications chosen from among 220 finalists. Aquila was awarded sixth place in Best of Show in the Website category.
Individual awards included an honorable mention for Social Justice Reporting for senior Mahika Halepete’s story on the refugee crisis, and another honorable mention in Local Climate Change Reporting for a story covering the Green New Deal by juniors Arya Maheshwari, Varsha Rammohan and Michael Eng, and sophomore Lucy Ge.
Honorable mentions were also won for 2019 Digital Story of the Year for coverage of the California Democratic Convention by seniors Eric Fang and Kathy Fang, and juniors Arushi Saxena and Anna Vazhaeparambil, and a story by Kathy Fang and senior Jessie Wang on biology teacher Thomas Artiss’ beekeeping hobby.