BDP wins at state journalism contest
The Bulldog Press media staff at Judge Memorial recently received a number of individual awards at the state high school journalism contest sponsored by the Utah College Media Alliance. The staff also won the Coverage Cup which is awarded to the Utah high school media staff (all classes) with the best coverage of a special-interest topic. This year the staff composed multimedia stories about citizenship.
For the 2018-19 school year the Bulldog Press focused on ways that Judge students and the BDP staff are improving our community. Here’s a link to the collection of those stories.
Citizenship means a lot of things. We told stories of students who volunteered on political campaigns, organized voter registration drives; we interviewed politicians, created voting guides for our readers, and provided opinions on election results. And since we go to a Catholic school we think being a citizen also means serving the community, taking an active role in the Church, and suggesting ways it can reform in the wake of the sex abuse scandals. We participated in a citizen science project called the Wasatch Wildlife Watch, which will show us how to balance the beauty of our mountains with continued human development. Finally, we interacted with media professionals and talked about our hopes for the future of journalism. We hope these stories inspire you and remind us why a free press matters.
The staff also participates in a project with PBS NewsHour, called Student Reporting Labs (SRL), that works with student journalists at schools across the country.
This year students in some of these labs created stories about citizen science in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. At the end of each year the top six films from participating schools are chosen for the yearly NewsHour SRL STEM film festival, and this year Judge is one of them. The idea behind this festival is to recognize excellence in the next generation of news journalists.
One of the videos was a national finalist in PBS NewsHour’s STEM student video awards, one of the six schools from around the country, along with videos from students from Oregon, Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Maine, and Pennsylvania. Judge sophomore Mark Monette produced the video about the Wasatch Wildlife Watch citizen science project. The BDP staff and students in Dr. Dasch Houdeshel’s zoology class also took on the role of citizen scientists by helping the researchers analyze data from the project.
Complete list the 2019 Futures award winners
Breaking news (video - Sean Parent 2nd place, Owen Perry 3rd)
News (video - Eleanor Young & Nefan Deng, 1st; writing - Amaia Horyna & Kalson Yussuf, 1st; photography - Tara Aguirre, 3rd)
Sports (photography - Sam Butcher, 1st)
Feature (video - Yara Ahmed and Kal Yussuf 1st, Mark Monette, Joseph Izampuye, Anthony Redding 2nd; writing - Joseph Izampuye, 1st)
Opinion (writing - Yara 1st, Amaia 3rd; video - Jacob Frausto, 1st)
Cartoon/Illustration (Alli Ryan, 2nd & 3rd)
Design (website 3rd, newspaper 3rd, video 1st)
Headlines (staff, 1st place)
Coverage Cup (staff, 1st place)
