It’s the time of the year when the staff earns awards through JEMKC (Journalism Educators of Metropolitan Kansas City) and the Kansas Scholastic Press Association. We have gotten many awards in the past week and are now looking forward to our state competition this coming Saturday, May 5.

Sarah speaking:

At the JEMKC awards, individual staff members as well as our staff overall (our website took second place in the competition), won many awards. The contest recognizes Kansas City area entries and is always a blast to go to. The awards ceremony takes place at Johnson County Community College, and this year two schools brought mascots. Later this week, our staff also found out that both our newspaper and website were named All-Kansas. An All-Kansas designation for a publication is the highest honor that can be earned in the state. A total of 48 schools submitted publications for the contest and 22 schools received the designation. Our newspaper was one of six newspapers in the 5A category to earn the award. Even more exciting for me, was being named All-Kansas for our website. A total of 16 schools submitted their site and only two websites, including JagWire News Online, were named All-Kansas. I am constantly proud of how amazing it is to receive an award like that given that this is only the second year we have had the website. I can’t think of a better place, staff or adviser to learn journalism at and with. It has been an awesome year.

Jill speaking:

I am so happy to see that we got an All-Kansas award for both our newspaper and our website. It just reinforces all of the hard work that we have put in this year. At the JEMKC awards, our staff did an amazing job and racked up awards for design, writing and photography. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in the scheme of things that we don’t realize just how great our staff is in the bigger picture. I think it is fun to see how we stack up to our local competition and show how great we have been doing all year long. When I first became editor-in-chief, I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to help keep the staff and the paper to the same standards that we have held ourselves too in previous years. I now see that I shouldn’t have even worried because we have such driven and motivated people on our staff that are winning awards from all over the metropolitan area. I can’t wait to see how this tradition continues next year and to see what all these amazing staff members do next.

Lesson of the week:

1. Our staff rocks.

Lesson 32 of being an editor-in-chief: Check.