Students from the journalism staff went to Northeast Community College on April 25 to compete for State. Some students had already won awards, but others had to compete in on-site writing competitions.

These competitions had many sections, including editorial, news and feature writing. Work was also submitted for PSAs, broadcasts and photography. Junior Logan Mosely’s work won first place for the news broadcast section. 

 “The story I did was about the levy override,” Moseley said. “It was early February, and I had left during lunch to go interview. It was a joint thing between all of the other schools. Everyone asked Schwartz (Dr. John Schwartz) questions, sort of like a press conference type of thing.”

A few of our students participated in the writing competitions. They won awards, such as senior Anna Burton with 2nd place in Yearbook Feature Writing, senior Elizabeth Hoffman with 3rd place in Headline Writing, junior Quinn Burton with 4th place in Editorial Writing, and senior Kelsey Nunnenkamp with 6th place in Newspaper News Writing.

“The topic they gave us was like a false scenario where a school would give kids a stamp on their wrist if they hadn’t paid their lunch bills,” Quinn Burton said. “You had to argue for or against that, and I argued against it.”

Not only were there competitions that gave prompts, but also competitions where the students had to come up with questions and interview someone themselves.

“My story was about renovation on Northeast Community College’s campus, so we interviewed the lady in charge of it, “Nunnenkamp said. “After the interview, we only had about 30 minutes or so to write.”

All of these students worked very hard on the work submitted. Behind the scenes, this work had to be picked out from the other student’s stories so that they could send them to State.

“Well, entries are usually due on March 1,” journalism adviser Mark Hilburn said. “So, advisors from across the state are able to submit their students’ work in 25 categories. Each school gets three entries. Usually, during the first week of April, the NSAA releases the top eight qualifiers in each of the 25 categories. If you have a student in the top eight, they are then invited to compete on-site at State.”

Millard West ended up placing 7th overall at State, and they will end the year strong with one more newspaper issue and two more MWHS news broadcasts.