THE SCOOP ON DIVERSITY
Local teen named California Journalist of the Year
As a sophomore at The Harker School in San Jose, Anna Vazhaeparambil began fighting for equity in sports reporting in the school newspaper. Now a senior, Anna’s efforts have been recognized by the Journalism Education Association (JEA), which named the Saratoga teen California Journalist of the Year.
As a sophomore at The Harker School in San Jose, Anna Vazhaeparambil began fighting for equity in reporting in the school newspaper. Now a senior, Anna’s efforts have been recognized by the Journalism Education Association (JEA), which named the Saratoga teen California Journalist of the Year.
When she began writing sports for the school newspaper, Anna noticed a large gap in the coverage of junior varsity athletes and girls sports teams.
“While we would cover every single football game,” she says, “there would only be one or two articles written about softball or girls water polo.”
To bridge this gap, Anna pitched a weekly sports roundup to her sports editor and adviser.
“I wrote 1,000-plus word articles every week, providing new updates on all the sports teams in a given season and featuring interviews with a different group of athletes in each recap,” Anna wrote in her Journalist of the Year portfolio. “When I served as sports editor the following year, I continued implementing new initiatives: live coverage of games, photo slideshows and even broadcast video.”
Now a senior, Anna serves as editor-in-chief of her school’s online news site, Harker Aquila, where, she wrote, “I continue fighting for diversity in our reporting on a much larger scale.”
“I covered Black Lives Matter protests during the summer and led a massive election package in November that was different from anything my program had ever produced before. I implemented structural changes — writing a new mission statement, creating a formal editorial policy and kickstarting a newsletter initiative — to publicly emphasize our commitment to diversity and outreach.”
Anna will represent California in JEA’S Journalist of the Year competition, held at the JEA/NSPA Spring National High School Journalism Convention. The top national winner will receive a $3,000 scholarship, and up to three runners-up will each receive an $850 scholarship.
Anna also received the top $500 prize in the Arnetta Garcin Memorial Scholarship contest held by the Journalism Education Association of Northern California (JEANC). The scholarship is named after Arnetta Garcin, a JEANC board member who died in 2002.
Garcin served as the journalism teacher and newspaper adviser for 32 years at Lynbrook High School in West San Jose and as an adjunct English instructor at De Anza College in Cupertino.
Palo Alto High School junior Avery Hanna took second place in the scholarship contest and will receive $300 from JEANC. Avery is a print editor-in-chief of Verde Magazine and focuses on bringing community issues to light.
Third place went to Oishee Misra, a senior at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino. Oishee, the co-editor-in-chief for El Estoque, will receive $200.
“I love to write. To me, writing is the most natural form of expression,” Oishee wrote in her portfolio. “And reporting — talking to people, extracting stories—is an amplified version of that exhilarating feeling.”