Photo by Cuyler Dunn
News Writing and Breaking Coverage
One of my biggest roles as editor-in-chief was always being on call. From spending an entire day hunkered in the J-Room writing while students stole chairs and vandalized bathrooms to covering a 300-student sit-in protest by writing a story about it in less than an hour, I covered the biggest events that faced LHS.
Photo by Owen Musser
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On Dec. 4, while hanging out with friends, I got a frantic call from one of my co-editors that the district was proposing a shut down of our school's gymnastics program due to budget cuts.
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The decision sparked an outpouring of support from the LHS community including social media movements and school sit-ins.
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​The next day, I mentored a younger staff member as he put out a story about the response from the community.
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​A few days after the decision was announced, students organized a sit-in during fourth hour in the school commons. Luckily, fourth hour was a journalism staff hour, so I frantically worked with other co-editors and staffers getting interviews, live tweeting and gathering information.
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​Following the protest, I wrote this story in less than an hour using all of the reporting done by myself and my peers.
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​Best of School Newspapers Online
1st Place News Writing, Kansas Scholastic Press Association December/January Monthly Contest
Photo screenshot from LHS Football Instagram
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After winning their homecoming football game, the LHS football team celebrated indoors and maskless, jumping around and throwing water in the air. The entire celebration was filmed and posted on the LHS football instagram. Shortly after, news of a positive test on the team surfaced.
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After first coming upon this news, I and one of my co-editors began to ask Douglas County and USD 497 health officials what effects the celebration might have on COVID-19 transmission. The response wasn’t positive.
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After hearing this, we spoke with the Lawrence High athletic director and football coaches for the reasoning behind the celebration and their response to the COVID transmission possibilities. All of this reporting was done within two journalism filled days.
The responses from the team sparked concern for public health in the midst of a global pandemic.
Best of SNO
1st Place News Writing, KSPA October 2021 Monthly Contest
Photo by Audrey Basham
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I was sitting in my third hour French class when my phone began to blow up with texts. Students were stealing hundreds of dollars worth of school items, inflicting thousands of dollars of damage and bragging about it on the internet. That day, the school shut most of the bathrooms to attempt to prevent more thefts and begin to repair the damage.
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​As soon as the bell rang, I ran to the J-Room and started working with one of my co-editors on a piece about the crazy trend that was leading my peers to desecrate our newly remodeled building. Luckily, one of our staffers had already gathered some interviews about the trend from students.
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This story spread rapidly and was linked in the AP, The Washington Post, The Guardian and more.
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​2nd Place News Writing, KSPA September 2021 Monthly Contest
Photo by Owen Musser
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After rape allegations against and troubling social media comments made by a member of the LHS football team spread rapidly through the student body, many were frustrated with the lack of action from school leaders.
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Students organized a protest during the summer at a district board meeting and spoke to board members at length about the issue and its prevalence at Lawrence High.
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After hearing about the board meeting protest, I quickly reached out to my adviser and photo editor to get on the scene.
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I reported on what happened during the protest at the meeting as well as conducting longer one-on-one interviews with students who were at the forefront of the movement.
I and a few of my staff were tuning into a regular Monday night board meeting regarding the continuation of online learning when a sudden outburst from the district superintendent sparked emotion and discussion for hours as the board meeting ran early into the next morning, eventually deciding to implement a hybrid model of learning.
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I worked with a team of reporters until almost 3 a.m. to compile hours of board meeting discussion and crucial decisions into a story that was ready for the community the next morning.
1st Place News Writing, KSPA October 2020 Monthly Contest
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1st Place News Writing, Journalism Educators of Metropolitan Kansas City
Photo by Kenna McNally
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I was sitting in my second-hour journalism class during my sophomore year when the lights suddenly went out. Due to construction, the class was meeting in make-shift classrooms in a storage shed. But the issue was much bigger than the little building that had become the J-room home.
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A power outage had swept through large swaths of the city, leaving the entire school without power. Due to my schedule that year, I was fulfilling my staff responsibilities in an intro to journalism class. This meant I was the only staffer in the room at the time and thus I took the lead on a story about all of the different ways students and teachers passed time in the outage.
Photo by Hannah Woods
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When the highly-contagious Omicron variant caused massive numbers of students and teachers to not attend school, the effects were starting to be felt.
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This assignment took a team effort for the same reason the story was being written in the first place: COVID-19. I was out sick with COVID-19, and so I couldn't get interviews, but with the help of a group of editors and staffers I was able to compile their interviews, conduct a few over email, and synthesize other COVID-19 information I could find to update the community on how the new variant was affecting schools.
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Best of SNO
Graphic by Riley Hoffer
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After a school shooter claimed the lives of four students in Oxford, Michigan, many of my peers and I were shaken by the events.
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As we began to grapple with how to report on this type of issue that is so prevalent nationwide I began to research more in-depth about the way the schools across the US conduct active threat drills.
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What I found was a wide array of different responses with different outcomes.
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I reached out to students, administration and district officials in charge of operating our active intruder drills and began to analyze the different ways that drills and practices can affect students, for better or worse.
Graphic by Anna Anderson​
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It's no secret that partisanship has increased dramatically in the US political landscape recently.
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We decided to do a deep analysis of how that changing political landscape has effected high school classrooms.
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A co-editor and I worked together to interview students and staff to see what their views of the situation were.