Mehlville High School Journalism Program Earns Top Honors

When the staff of the Mehlville High School newspaper came back from a student journalism conference in Kansas City last fall, they had one mission in mind—completely revamping the newspaper’s website to make it the “go-to” source for students in the community.

After months of work to rebuild and relaunch the site, mymehlville.com, the students’ efforts were rewarded March 7 at the Sponsors of School Publications of Greater St. Louis annual award ceremony. The journalism program received numerous honors, but co-editors Becca Honeyball and Ryan Dell said one of the most exciting was the rating of Excellent handed out for the website.

Seeing all of the energy poured into improving the website yield some recognition was gratifying, the pair said.

 “We put 20 hours a week in (the website). The comments from the judges were really positive,” Dell said. Honeyball added that the staff would often come in on the weekends and work at the school “until we got kicked out.”

Dell and Honeyball also earned special recognition during the Sponsors of School Publications “Write-Off” contest. For the contest, students listened to a speaker from the Queen of Peace Women’s Center talk about bills in the state legislature concerning women’s issues. Students were then asked to write either a news feature or an opinion column on what they had just heard.

Dell opted to write a news piece and earned a Superior rating while Honeyball chose to pen an opinion article, an effort that garnered her the event’s top prize of Best in Show. The award came as something of a shock to Honeyball, who up until recently hadn’t considered opinion writing her forte.

“Last year, I totally hated editorials, but this year I feel they are one of my stronger writing points,” Honeyball said. “I’ve started being more open about my opinions.”

So, when the judges began to announce the winners, Honeyball didn’t expect her name to be even close to the top of the list.

“I didn’t even think I was going to get Excellent,” she said. “It was crazy. I was just sitting there and everyone else was screaming.”

Dell and Honeyball credited the hard-work, tight-knit nature and dedication of their fellow staff members for the program’s success. They also said their adviser and teacher Erin Moeckel had responded to their enthusiasm in kind.

“She’s done so much for us. She’s spent a lot of time with us,” Dell said.

 The willingness to put in so many hours and effort toward producing the student newspaper and posting daily website updates doesn’t come without a certain degree of passion for journalism.

“The reward is being able to talk to people and find out what they think. For me, journalism is all about the people,” Honeyball said. 

Senior Brett Heinkel is the program’s webmaster and said a collaborative approach has helped improve the student publications, particularly the website. More comfortable tinkering with the technical back-end of the site, Heinkel said he went to the other staff members for help making decisions about the design and layout.

“It was nice to know something I have been dedicated to went to a recognized cause,” Heinkel said of the website’s award.

Overseeing all of the students is Moeckel, who has been a teacher at Mehlville for five years. Moeckel graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism in 2004, but she quickly found herself drawn to teaching and recently earned her masters in the field. She said seeing that the dedication of students in the journalism program has inspired her.

“You work so hard because you see them work so hard. You want them to be successful,” she said.

With many of this year’s staff set to graduate in the spring, Moeckel said she is experiencing the bittersweet joy familiar to many teachers who say goodbye to students (or “my kids,” as Moeckel calls them) they have watched grow and change over the years.  

“I will be sad to see these seniors go,” she said. “It’s cool to see how far they have come.”

In addition to the website, the Mehlville journalism program earned an Excellent rating for the overall newspaper.

Other winners include: 

Brent Pearson: Honorable Mention in News Story

Liza DiStefano: Honorable Mention in Newspaper Commentary

Katlyn Sansone: Honorable Mention in Newsmagazine Cover Design, Superior in Newspaper Sports Design

Jake Vantrease: Superior in Newspaper Sports Design

Becca Honeyball: Honorable Mention in Newsmagazine Cover Design, Write-off Best in Show

Ryan Dell: Excellent in News Story, Honorable Mention in Newspaper Commentary, Superior in  Newspaper Sports Design