Maplewood Student Newspaper Wins National Award

MAPLEWOOD AND SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Columbia High School’s 80-year-old student newspaper has earned a first place honor for the sixth year in a row in the annual competition held by the American Scholastic Press Association.

The advisers for “The Columbian,” Joshua Enyeart (high school English Department) and Cindy Malhotra (the fine arts department) said in a statement, “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 competition is open to 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.

The high school's newspaper team tallied enough points in each category to earn first place.

In order to attain staff positions on the publication, students must take the school's Production Journalism course (Fine Arts) after completing the Journalistic Writing (ELA) or Computer Graphics (Fine Arts) course.

The editorial board for the last school year was made up of: Martina Zacker, Nicholas Shires, Noori Zubieta, Jordan Young, Sydney Rednik, Zoe Slavin, Emily Wilner, Ari Mehlman, Ruari McEwan, and Jonathon Cutler.

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.

The school closures amid coronavirus challenged the team’s ability to continue to produce a print version, according to the advisors, so the shift to a digital platform was necessary.

The digital version can be found here: https://chsthecolumbian.blogspot.com.

Students from Maplewood and South Orange attend Columbia High.

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