Laguna Blanca School’s Fourth Estate Earns All-American Honor Rating
Laguna Blanca School is pleased to announce that the High School student newspaper, The Fourth Estate, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this Spring, earned an All-American Honor Rating from the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA), one the highest honors possible for a secondary school newspaper. The paper also recently received the Gold Medalist Certificate from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA).
Along with the student paper’s recognition, several students received Gold Circle Awards from Columbia (CSPA) for their work. These awards recognize superior work by student journalists usually as individuals but sometimes as an entire staff with either print or online media. In the “Single Subject News or Feature Package – Two Pages, Double-truck or Special Section Design” category, First Place honors went to Anastasia Antonova, Caty Lafitte, and Zoe Serbin for their feature “Face off: the fight for the presidential position.” In the same category, Anastasia Antonova and Zoe Serbin earned Third Place for “Generation Dubstep.” In the “Single Subject News or Feature Page – Single Page Design Portfolio of Work,” Helena Davila won First Place, and in the “Feature Page Design” category, Caty Lafitte also received Second Place for her article “Local Roots.” Senior Allie Lewis Towbes earned First Place in the category “Op-Ed or News Analysis Page Design Portfolio of Work” and Second Place in the “Personal opinion: Off-campus issues category” for her article “Hunger Hurts.”
In addition to the top honor, The Fourth Estate also received 4 incredible Marks of Distinction from the NSPA, including Coverage & Content, Writing & Editing, Photos, Art & Graphics, and Layout & Design.
“These issues took an extraordinary amount of time to adjudicate because they were written so well,” said Dr. Joanna Simpson of the NSPA in her judges’ summary comments. “It was difficult to find areas to improve upon. But even the best have room for improvement. It was a pleasure to review [Laguna Blanca’s] newspapers and I expect to see good things from The Fourth Estate in the future.”
For more information about Laguna Blanca School’s newspaper, The Fourth Estate, please contact Trish McHale, the Journalism Instructor at tmchale@lagunablanca.org or at (805) 687-2461 x 317.
Laguna Blanca NOW—for today’s modern student. Laguna Blanca School is a K-12 co-educational, college preparatory day school. Laguna Blanca School guides students to greater heights by building upon the 80-year tradition of academic excellence with new and innovative teaching methods and programs. With the thriving global studies program, resourceful iPad initiative, competitive Condor League athletics, and the state-of-the-art academic research center, the School continues to broaden and enrich our students’ educational experience. For more information, please visit lagunablanca.org.