Malvern Senior Named PA Press Association Student Journalist of the Year

By jIM MACK

MALVERN, PA -- Justice Bennett ’16, has thousands of questions running through his head, and that drives him to seek out answers. That drive is what has led him to numerous achievements both inside and outside of the classroom at Malvern Prep.

He is co-President of the Diversity Awareness Club, a captain of the Speech and Debate team and a captain of the Mock Trial team. He also started Students Helping Students, which helps get inner-city schools the resources they need. His desire to learn and to help others, though, is best fulfilled through his work as a journalist.

Bennett, a Malvern resident who is co-editor of Malvern Prep’s student newspaper, The Blackfriar Chronicle (BFC), was named the Pennsylvania Press Association Student Journalist of the Year, and his portfolio was nominated for review for national awards at the Journalism Education Association's (JEA) convention in Los Angeles April 14-17.

“Justice has put in more than 40 hours building a web portfolio that shares work in 11 categories of the JEA's curriculum,” says Kate Plows, ceramics and journalism teacher and BFC advisor.

Bennett’s moving feature about climbing suicide rates for young people won the 2016 Journalism Education Association’s (JEA) Student Impact Award. The feature, “Light of Exposure” started out as a small column for his journalism class. It was a topic that hit home, and once he started digging, he realized it needed to be a longer feature. The article took about two months to complete. PhillyVoice.com ran this article as a top story this April. The article originally appeared in the January 2016 issue of the BFC.

“It just seemed like there had been so many suicides by young people in the area and I was upset. One of those was 13-year-old Cayman Naib. He was a family friend from pre-school, and when he went missing my mom was a big help in the search and we even drove up and down the R5 hanging up posters,” Bennett says.

“[The Impact Award] is a tremendous recognition, and well deserved,” says Malvern Head of School Christian Talbot. “It highlights the good work that emerges when someone puts his mind to something and works and works and works at polishing the stone until there is a gem.”

According to the JEA, the Student Impact award was created “to recognize a secondary school student or team of students who, through the study and practice of journalism, have made a significant difference in their own lives, the lives of others, the school they attend and/or the community in which they reside. The Impact Award recognizes student writing that brings issues to the forefront and from the walls of the high school to the world at large.”

“As we've discussed so often in the BFC newsroom, awards really don't matter so much. But it's always remarkable to note when passion plus commitment are recognized,” notes Plows. “This is not always the norm. It's even better when recognition leads to an even wider audience for an important story.

Bennett notes that the BFC is very much a collaborative effort and it is because of the work of his fellow editors and staff (as well as previous editors-in-chief) that he is successful.

This past November, Bennett and fellow BFC editor Ben Yankelitis ’16 presented at the National High School Journalism Conference in Orlando, Fla. The co-editors presented about how newsrooms can utilize social media to engage their audiences and share stories.

Bennett credits Plows for her inspiration and support. “Without her pushing me to write for the staff my sophomore year I wouldn't even have found this passion. She gives the BFC everything she has and pushes herself every day to support us however she can,” Bennett says.

Bennett hopes to study in a major related to political science in college and write for a student newspaper. He plans on a career in journalism, although public office is also an option down the road. These aspirations make sense, because in each of Bennett’s works, he strives to make a difference.

“I hope that the Malvern administration starts to take our paper seriously as a means of student expression. I think the foundation is really set for the BFC to be a great forum for voice in the community, and I hope I can check the website while I'm in college and see people using the BFC to voice their opinions about the school,” Bennett says. “I hope a culture shift happens where things change because of journalism like they do in the real world.”