The Texas Association of Journalist Educators (TAJE) Fall Fiesta Conference awarded Lee High School in 8 events: Broadcast and Editorial Writing, Front Page Newspaper Design, as well as Scavenger and categories in Onsite Photography. The Bugle Call won 3rd in Online Newspaper, one place up from last year’s Honorable Mention.
North East Independent School District is proud to announce the launch date of Wood Middle School’s online newspaper, The Maximum! It will go live on Friday, October 28, 2011. On that day, you can check out their newspaper here: http://newspaper.neisd.net/wood
The Garner Gazette Goes Live! This marks the first online newspaper in Garner’s history. The students come up with their stories, interview their sources, write the articles, take the pictures, edit and post their news. They encourage and welcome your comments about the articles. You can check out their newspaper here: http://newspaper.neisd.net/garner/
The Driscoll Defender will go live this Friday, October 7th ushering in the official start of NEISD’s online middle school newspaper program. Driscoll is one of the six middle schools in the district currently participating in the program, offering a student run newspaper featuring campus news, student and teacher highlights, featured stories, and student interest pieces. Going online will allow students to publish more frequently and cover more organizations than the traditional hardcopy newspaper. The online format will also allow a greater audience for the students’ work, making the paper a dynamic news source for the community. All of the NEISD high school journalism programs went online last year and have already garnered several regional, state and national awards. The Garner Gazette is schedule to launch the following week on October 14th and the other campuses will launch later in the semester.
“The Pride,” the online student newspaper of Johnson High School, is a Crown finalist for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA). The Crown awards are one of the highest honors a scholastic or collegiate publication can receive. Only 19 online publications in the country were selected as finalists and only three of those were in Texas. “The Pride” will be awarded either a silver or gold Crown at the CSPA spring convention during spring break, Mar. 14 – 18.
“My staff feels very honored and privileged to receive this recognition,” said Velisa Jewett, journalism teacher. “Considering that only two other high schools in the San Antonio area have ever received a Crown award in any category in the past 20 years, they are especially proud of this moment.”
Jewett feels this recognition for the students means that the hard work they do is not going unnoticed.
“It makes them more confident in their skills in new judgment, reporting and writing and really just providing a service and a product to readers,” said Jewett.
While moving from pint to online is a definite change for any paper, according to Jewett, the transition has been easy.
“After the initial shock at how fast the pace of online journalism can move–even in a scholastic environment–it’s easier than you would think to move the publication primarily online,” said Jewett. “The kids are producing a record amount of content–there is no shortage of news and sports coverage on a high school campus–and enjoy getting feedback from their readers, their peers and others in the community via comments.”
Students are able to track how many people view their site each day, as well as where they are viewing the site.
“It is thrilling when the staff gets to see that the Web site is actually being viewed all over the world,” said Jewett. “That very real sense of communicating at that level, at a faster pace, is rewarding for them and therefore more enjoyable.”
View “The Pride” online at www.myjagnews.com. For a list of all 19 finalists, visit cspa.columbia.edu/docs/no-show/2011-online-crowns-finalists.html (external link).