Penn Points Travels across the Country

By Kendal Phillips –

Penn Points Newspaper is taking a field trip…to Anaheim, California.

Sarah Garner, Kendal Phillips, Jordann Stekervetz, Sarah Schaeffer, Crystal Bugner, Jake Shiner, Sam Valentin, and Blake Wales will be representing Penn Points at NSPA this year.

Every student in Penn Points club and the Journalism classes were given the option to attend the National Scholastic Press Association this year in California.  The cost was relatively high and the notice was short but those eight students made the effort to go.

Over 160 entries were submitted but only 17 were chosen in the online news category.  As more and more school newspapers go online, the competition in the online category is becoming more competitive.

Last year Penn Points was not only nominated for the Pacemaker Award at the NSPA conference in Portland, Oregon but was one of seven that won the Award. Throughout the year Penn Points continued winning awards.

Two out of the four final nominations in the Multimedia category were from Penn Points.  Sarah Schaeffer and Taylor Groff’s story on a Chinese student musician in Penn Manor won second place and Kendal Phillips and Taylor Groff’s story on the mosaic wall snagged honorable mention.

At NSPA the students will attend seminars and conferences to gain more information on how to successfully write for a newspaper.  Keynote speakers at the conference are Steve Lopez from the Los Angeles Times, Lisa Ling host of “Our America” and Laura Ling host and reporter on “E! Investigates.”

No matter how the competition turns out, the conference is expected to be a rewarding experience for the students attending.