The Star opens the door for the next generation
Best of the best from GTA high school newspapers recognized for excellence
Dozens of high school newspaper staff — the journalists of tomorrow — received some high praise on Thursday.
Awards were handed out in 21categories ranging from reporting to illustration at the 19th annual Toronto Star High School Newspaper Awards, with winners and runnerups selected from nearly 600 submissions.
The Star’s Life editor, Mary Vallis, emceed the event, while Star reporter Tara Deschamps, a former awardwinner herself, offered words of wisdom and encouraged the young reporters, photographers and cartoonists to “not to give up on journalism.” (Back in 2007, Deschamps’s own high school newspaper in Thornhill, Ont., was a runner-up for best volunteer newspaper.)
The awards portion of the event kicked off with the Brad Henderson Award, named in honour of the late Star senior manager and given to someone with outstanding journalistic potential. Samantha Quinto from Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School is the 2015 winner. Henderson’s son, Daniel, presented the award and highlighted how Quinto juggles her duties at her school’s student newspaper alongside volunteer work, play- ing sports and participating in the youth business program DECA — and still stays late to make sure the paper gets out.
Quinto beamed while accepting the award to a chorus of cheers from her fellow Mary Ward Planet staff members and teachers from the Scarborough school, which also picked up four other first-place awards, including best newspaper (10 staff members or greater).
First place for Best Newspaper (10 staff members and under) went to Tiger Talk from Harbord Collegiate Institute, while Best Electronic Newspaper went to the Reckoner at Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute.
Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute was also the day’s big overall winner, with six individual students picking up first-place awards: Xin Niu Zhang for critical writing, Cathy Zhang for editorial cartoons, Parnika Godkhindi for editorial writing, Bill Xun for feature writing (short), Ananna Rafa for illustration and Susie Liu for opinion writing.