Check out issues of the Grady High paper at www.thesoutherneronline.com.
A few weeks ago, aspiring student journalists at Grady High in Atlanta had their suspicions confirmed: The Midtown school has one of the best student-produced newspapers in the country.
In March, the Scholastic Press Association at Columbia University in New York awarded top honors to Grady’s monthly paper, The Southerner, marking the second year in a row it was singled out. The prize also completed a trifecta of first-place finishes for this school year, joining the previously-awarded National Scholastic Press Association and the Scroll Gallup awards. It was the first time that three honors have been achieved in the same year. In addition, the school’s quarterly magazine, Nexus, brought home Columbia’s Gold Crown Award for the first time.
Not only did the publications score points for exceptional writing, they also won for the types of stories published, from features on local restaurants to in-depth investigations into school controversies. Journalism teacher and publications advisor Dave Winter said two key elements make the paper and magazine successful.
“It starts with the students who are very media savvy, very mature and serious about being journalists,” he said. “They have a long tradition of being informed and listening to the news, and they know early on they want to be part of this program.”
The second factor is the administration’s support of editorial license.
“The administration all the way to the top supports independent press freedom,” said Winter. “The type of story that might get censored or subject to prior review somewhere else doesn’t get silenced here. There’s a commitment to the learning value of allowing students to practice journalism. Even if we make a mistake, there’s still valuable learning from that.”
Even when school officials haven’t been particularly thrilled with some of the content, they didn’t block it said Winter.
“And in fact, those decisions are some of the best learning - deciding why we are publishing this story, if it is serving our readers’ needs. That’s an important thought process, and giving them the power to make those decisions is one of the great things behind this program.”
Last year’s stories covered local school board elections, the controversy over football players who did not live in Grady’s district and an in-depth, multi-media piece on the divide between affluent and poor schools.
“In the past year, our news writing was pretty awesome,” said Winter. “We also had some less serious coverage that made a good complement to the hard-hitting stories. And all of them were polished with good production values.”
Since Winter arrived at Grady in 2001, the program has grown from about 15 students to 50. “Originally, we only had one newspaper class; now we have three,” he said. “And there’s a lot more to do. We have a social media presence, a web site and a Facebook page where we have a project called ‘Humans of Grady.’ That mix allows us to highlight the diversity of Grady’s 1,200 students.”
The current editor-in-chief, Margo Stockdale, has been part of the journalism program since her sophomore year, Now a senior, the Candler Park resident says the first journalism class she took introduced her to a project that “absorbs my life.”
“Writing helped me find my voice,” she said. “But what also appealed to me was being able to speak for people who are sometimes less spoken for. And the paper is a respected news source in the high school journalism world. We work very hard on every issue, sometimes staying until 11 at night. Earning these awards has validated what we’ve done in the past two years.”
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