by Jerianna Hostetler
Viking Media at Northwest consists of three different journalism classes: Yearbook, Newspaper, and Digital Broadcast Journalism. These classes are designed for students to use their creative eye to improve the content that the student body experiences, inform the school about happenings in their high school, town, and the world around them, and give a fun way to reminisce on the year. The journalism department has not always exceeded the way it has in this past year. This year there were 17 students that made it to state journalism: two from the Viking yearbook, four from the Viking Saga newspaper, and 13 from broadcasting.
Advisor of all three of these classes, Beth Kavan, said that Northwest has never had the opportunity to take this many students before and she was extremely happy for them to have this opportunity. State Journalism has never gotten much recognition in past years, and when talking to first-year journalism students, some even confessed that they didn’t know it existed.
What many people do not know is that journalism can be a very competitive thing to everyone participating in it. In order to qualify for state journalism, a contestant has to place in the top 8 in their category. When that contestant goes to State, they will have an hour and fifteen minutes to compete in their category. This can mean that they are writing a headline for a made-up newspaper or yearbook, writing a news story based on whatever the board comes up with for that year, or a number of other categories.
Out of the other 8 people that compete, there are judges that have to read all of the pieces submitted and choose which is best out of all. But no matter if someone writes the best or worst story, everyone who competes at state automatically gets a metal from first to eighth place.
This year is the most successful year in terms of how many students qualified.
Many students loved having the opportunity.
“I enjoyed state journalism so much because I got to hang out with close friends and meet some new people,” senior Grace Stratman said. “It was an exciting experience to be part of because you knew that you placed but you didn’t know exactly where.”
The Viking Media staff members were able to bond together and celebrate their successes as a group.
“State journalism was a lot of fun because I got to be with my fellow classmates and teachers,” senior Justin Hiser said. “I even placed first in one of my categories and that was a very accomplishing feeling.”
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