Columbia High School’s newspaper, The Columbian, has earned the first place award in an annual competition held by the American Scholastic Press Association for the sixth year in a row.
The national competition is open to any and all student-run newspapers from across the country. Entries are critiqued on journalistic content, journalistic decision-making, visual layout and design, photography, illustration, and overall editing. Columbia High School’s (CHS) newspaper team tallied enough points in each category to earn themselves a first-place position for the sixth year in a row.
Advisors for “The Columbian,” Joshua Enyeart (CHS English Dept.) and Cindy Malhotra (CHS Fine Arts) jointly shared, “We are so proud of the team and couldn’t be happier for them. Our students fought through a challenging transition last spring, showing grit and determination by moving our print-based processes to a digital platform for the first time ever!”
Judges noted that CHS has “…an excellent school newspaper, which shows the creativity and journalistic knowledge of [its] reporters, writers, photographers, layout/graphics designers and advisor[s].”
The Columbian is a student-run publication whose leaders are enrolled in the Production Journalism course (Fine Arts), and have earned their positions after completing the Journalistic Writing (ELA) or Computer Graphics (Fine Arts) courses. COVID-19, the global pandemic, and a school closure all challenged the team’s ability to continue to produce a print version of the publication so the shift to a digital platform was necessary.
The historic move marked the beginning of a new era in the institution’s more than 80-year existence. Martina Zacker, Nicholas Shires, Noori Zubieta, Jordan Young, Sydney Rednik, Zoe Slavin, Emily Wilner, Ari Mehlman, Ruari McEwan, and Jonathon Cutler made up the editorial board for the team for the 2019 – 2020 school year. The art/design team members for 2019-20 were Dana Hugel, Avery Soupios, Matt McBride, Arielle Loubier, Derek Gutierrez, Sydney Mannion, Isaac Weber, Jack Griffith, Leo Preston, Ethan Walden, and Charlie Hummel.
Advisers for The Columbian are Joshua Enyeart (English Dept.) and Cindy Malhotra (Fine Arts). The digital version of The Columbian can currently be found here: https://chsthecolumbian.blogspot.com.