Journalism students win national honor: Carlmont publication earns Pacemaker Award from the National Scholastic Press Association

Started in 2010, the online multimedia site is part of the journalism courses’ curriculum, said Justin Raisner, Carlmont English and journalism teacher. This is the first national award the department has won and students are taking home more than the title, Raisner said.

“It’s significant for a lot of reasons. One is the recognition of what we do and just the affirmation that we are doing it right; but not only are we doing it right, but we’re doing it as well as, or better than, anyone else in the country. For high school students, this is really exciting because a lot want to pursue media or journalism in college. So we’re hoping this will open a lot of doors that some students might get recruited from colleges and maybe get some scholarships,” Raisner said.

Scot Scoop publishes new content daily and receives more than 6,000 unique visitors each month, Raisner said. What’s even more impressive is the quality of work that’s produced through this project-based learning environment, Raisner said.

Students are assigned a beat, such as focusing on school clubs or sports, then propose and write their self-initiated stories, which two student co-editors in chief are responsible for reading and revising, Raisner said.

This year, senior Sarah Klieves and junior Shira Stein joined to serve as editors of the award-winning publication.

“You definitely have a lot of pride knowing that it was all the hard work combined that you put in and of course [we] have great staff behind us. They’re really doing the work with all of the content. We’re just there making it all come together. It’s really a team effort and it’s just cool to know everyone’s working together,” Klieves said.

Carlmont’s journalism program also includes the monthly newspaper The Highlander. Students from both lower division courses write for both the newspaper and publish online content while the upper division class primarily focuses on print, Raisner said.

This year, students reviewed previous Pacemaker competitors and updated the Scot Scoop site to push it into the winners’ circle, Klieves said.

“I think we looked at a lot of designs from past winners and we figured out what our site needed to have to improve from last year. And we added a lot of stuff like feature stories as well as adding a podcast center and incorporating tweets on our home page. So we did, I think, just freshen it up,” Klieves said.

Stein said she agreed keeping with trends by adding multimedia such as info-graphics and videos helped Scot Scoop stand out.

Having the entire team recognized for their outstanding efforts was both emotional and thrilling for her and Klieves, Stein said.

“It was probably one of the biggest accomplishments of my high school career,” Stein said. “It was really, really exciting because this could potentially just change a lot of people’s future.”

She’s been a journalism buff since her freshman year and plans on at least minoring in the subject when she ventures to college, Stein said. Raisner was her advisor early on and she’s thankful he persuaded her to take his courses, Stein said.

“I enjoy getting to tell the story of someone who didn’t get to [have their story] be told before,” Stein said. “To spread info to our student body, to provide a broader perspective of knowledge as well.”

Klieves said she’s motivated as a writer for similar reasons and plans to take her Scot Scoop lessons to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo when she studies journalism next year.

“I’ve always loved to read and write and I just think something about it was so exciting. To be part of a team that lets people know about things that are going on … I just kind of fell in love with it,” Klieves said. “I think it was a lot of hands-on experience as well as just life lessons in general on how to deal with people. You got to work on your people skills and that’s just really beneficial to anyone in life.”

Raisner is confident that the hard work students invested into Scot Scoop earned them more than a Pacemaker Award.

“It’s a real world environment, the way the class is taught, and the way this works, they learn a tremendous amount of responsibility for themselves and [when] working with others. They really learn they can’t take short cuts; they have to do the work to create a high quality thing. The amount of research the students put into each article is tremendous. The challenge of going out and talking to people and talking to people in a situation where it might be uncomfortable, but challenging, but to really find ways to tell the whole story,” Raisner said. “So it’s learning to be a responsible human being and actually be ready to work in a professional environment.”

To check out Carlmont High School’s award winning publication visit www.scotscoop.com.

samantha@smdailyjournal.com

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