After a two-hour drive packed in a 15-passenger van with 12 students and their luggage, seniors and juniors from Brenda Gorsuch’s journalism class arrived at the Charlotte airport where they would depart for the 2013 National High School Journalism Convention in Boston Nov. 14-17.
At the convention the students, including seniors Sierra Fender, Melissa White, Katie Miller, Shannon Miller, Suzanne English, Andrew Murray, Sarah Littauer and Lara Bannister and juniors Graham Galloway, Haley Staton, Austin Woodard and Maggie King, attended a variety of newspaper and yearbook classes and competed in several events.
On Nov. 16 more than 2,000 high school students from across the nation competed for a superior, excellent or honorable mention rating in the national write-off competition. Superior awards were presented to White for yearbook cover/endsheets, Galloway for yearbook sports copy/captions and Fender for graphic design/photo illustration.
Excellent awards were presented to King for yearbook clubs copy/captions, Katie Miller for review writing and Shannon Miller for news writing.
Honorable mention awards were presented to English for feature writing, Murray for sports writing, Staton for yearbook student life copy/captions and Littauer for yearbook student life photography.
In addition to the individual awards, the Westwind yearbook received a Best in Show Award in the 225-274 page yearbook category and the Wingspan Online received a Best in Show in the small school website publication category.
King, Katie Miller, Murray and Woodard made up the journalism quiz bowl team that earned the third seed and made it to the quarterfinals. The quiz bowl championship trophy went to Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Penn.
“Quiz bowl was a good experience, and as a team with two members new to quiz bowl I think we did well,” King said. “In the future we will study more and hopefully we’ll win next year.”
While in Boston the students visited Harvard University, took a Freedom Tour and visited the Boston Marathon bombing site.
“Boston was a great experience,” King said. “Not only did I learn a lot about journalism, but I got to travel to a place I had never been before.”
By Katie Miller
