Bowie Blast -- Week of Dec. 12, 2020
Bowie Blast 12/12/2020
We are proud of our Bulldogs and encourage teachers and coaches to submit news to Mr. Robinson's office!
Newspaper
The Dispatch has had a very exciting couple of weeks with many well deserved and hard earned recognitions and awards.
The Dispatch staff earned their third straight Pacemaker award from the National Scholastic Press Association. The award means the newspaper is one of the top-24 papers in the country in a contest. It is compared to winning a Pulitzer Prize for scholastic journalism. Bowie’s Dispatch was the only large format (broadsheet) to win a Pacemaker this year.
The Dispatch staff competed in multiple competitions at the virtual convention hosted by NSPA and the Journalism Education Association. The dispatchonline.net earned its first ever Best in Show placing with a 9th place spot in the very competitive online contest for large schools. Send-in NSPA Individual awards that were for 2019-2020 newspapers:
Rae Gray, Finalist, Honorable Mention – Photo Layout – this is top-10 in the country for all of 2019-2020. Virtual NSPA Best in Show individual awards winners for 2020-2021 newspapers were: Lucianna Chouiery – Blog – 3rd place, Faith Lawrence – Election Coverage – 4th place Cade Spencer – Editorial Leadership – 5th place Faith Lawrence – Newspaper Design – 8th place Colin Barnes – Podcast – 9th place Natalie Cullen and Izzy Rejino – Election Coverage – 9th place Cade Spencer and Aurshi Sharma – Covid-19 Coverage – 10th place.
The Dispatch Online, also earned its third straight Distinguished Site Award from School Newspapers Online. Meeting the requirements is a time-consuming process where Co-Editors-in-Chief Shikha and Shruti Patel are required to submit for six different broad criteria called Badges. Each Badge has multiple requirements that the site must achieve, these include Site Excellence, Multimedia, Audience Engagement, Continuous Coverage, Story Page Excellence and Excellence in Writing. We were the 6th high school nationally to earn a Distinguished Site award this year.
And, last but not least, Columbia Scholastic Press Association, based at Columbia University in NYC, announced that the Dispatch will receive a coveted CSPA Crown for 2020-2021. This is for work from 2019-2020. For the first time we made the decision to enter the "Hybrid" category which means the judges looked at both the print edition AND our website and compared those with others from around the country. CSPA announces the Crown winners in December each year, but it won't be until March at their annual convention when we will learn if the paper will be a Silver or Gold Crown winner. This is the second time in four years that the Dispatch has won a Crown.
These journalism students continue to prove that no matter the circumstances, they are among the best high school journalists in the country. Our newspaper and website are becoming consistent winners at the national level and it is something we are committed to continue for years to come.
Yearbook
Results from the individual awards from the National Scholastic Press Association include many Bowie students: 5th place in the country for Design of the Year Portfolio to grad Logan Dorsey (Logan also won Spread of the Year last year - amazing for one student to place twice nationally!) and placing in the top ten in the country: Honorable Mention Yearbook Spread Design to juniors Mia Brelsford & Isabella Grahmann, Honorable Mention Infographic to seniors Ryan Kinney & Sadah Young and Honorable Mention Environmental Portrait to senior Haley Drouin. Best in Show for the convention: Lone Star 2020 awarded 7th place Best in Show for yearbooks 352-608 pages, 3rd place in Yearbook Design to seniors Zoe McGilton & Natalie Roche for the Varsity Boys Basketball spread, 7th place in Yearbook Design to senior Mariah Barsotti & junior Marin Scholz for the Culinary Luncheons spread, 8th place in Yearbook Design to juniors Noelle Moody & Charli Reed for the Color Guard spread and 9th place in Yearbook Design to juniors Zach Conlan & Taj James for the Tennis spread.
The 2020 Lone Star yearbook, "The Usual," was announced as a Crown winner by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, out of Columbia University in NYC. Only 41 high school yearbooks in the country were awarded and we're the only one in AISD - last year 56 were awarded, so it was more competitive than ever. This is only the eighth Crown in our history. Teachers and administration are proud of the work & dedication it took to achieve these goals even while virtually finishing the book in a pandemic.
Choir
Bowie had several choir students participate in virtual Pre-Area auditions for the TMEA All-State Choir Process. We have two students advancing and one alternate for the final round of auditions taking place in January: Tennyson Tole - 2nd Chair, Soprano 2 - Ashira Fronk - 5th Chair, Alto 1 - and Cade Harrison - 1st Alternate, Bass 1.
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