Tower Places in Top 10 “Best of Show” Broadsheets

Adding to its growing list of accolades, Tower, the School’s student-run newspaper, placed in the top 10 for Best of Show broadsheet print newspapers from the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA).

The paper received the award for its second issue this school year, which was published in November 2019. 

This is the first time that Tower has entered this competition; NSPA normally requires participating schools to be on-site for its Spring National High School Journalism Convention in Nashville, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, the convention was canceled and NSPA opened award submissions to all schools in the country. Ellen Cowhey, one of Tower’s faculty advisors, noted that this likely meant that the competition was likely more fierce this year since more schools were eligible to participate. 

"I'm extremely proud of the entire Tower staff for all the hard work they've put in throughout the year, especially recently with all the coverage we have been able to do in response to the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Logan Schiciano ’20, Tower’s co-editor-in-chief. “This award is definitely indicative of the effort we've put in; more importantly, it motivates me, and I'm sure the rest of the staff, to work harder and improve our publication so that we can do even better in future competitions."

Michelle Wei ’20, co-editor-in-chief, iterated a similar sentiment, noting that “I’m really proud of each and every one of our staff members because I see the work that they do and it’s beyond exciting to see that the NSPA recognizes that as well.” 

As impressive as the NSPA award may be, it isn’t the only one Tower recently received. Since the mid-March closure of the School’s campus, Tower has won eight awards from School Newspapers Online, the provider that hosts Tower’s website. Six of eight stories were written after the campus was closed and seven stories fell under the paper’s coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak, “Coronavirus Chronicles.” 

“Awards aside, I have to say I have never been more proud of the good work our student journalists are producing,” Cowhey said. “I know this is documenting our community's stories in meaningful ways. That is one more way we are all trying to help to keep the community web intact.”

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