The Round Table, Middletown High School’s student media organization, won the sweepstakes award at the Frederick News-Post’s Mike Powell Excellence in Journalism awards ceremony held at the newspaper’s building on April 27. The sweepstakes award recognizes the school program that wins the most awards for their work.
Powell was the managing editor of the Frederick News-Post, working at the publication for 13 years before passing away in 2004. Powell was an advocate for high school journalism and the driving force behind the competition, which honors the best of high school journalism in Frederick County high schools. The awards were named after Powell following his death.
During the awards, Middletown took home many first-place prizes. The Kate Leckie Excellence in News Writing award went to Ali Williams and Sam Beltran, Best Sports Story went to Evan Moreland, Abbe Pannucci got the award of Best Sports Feature, Best News Photography went to Harry Plunkett, Best Online Blog was won by Laurel Fogle and Best Website was won by mhsroundtable.com.
Middletown High School has been participating in these awards for the last 21 years and has won the top overall award for 15 of the last 19 years.
Noah Kady, advisor of Middletown’s journalism program, has been the adviser during that period and has watched as the way teenagers consume news has changed from traditional print media to more digital storytelling.
“In the beginning, it was all newspapers. Now, fewer than half of the schools have one. It’s all online (for us),” he said.
While MHS no longer publishes a newspaper called The Round Table, it instead offers students the choice of reading articles and watching broadcast pieces online at mhsroundtable.com, covers breaking news on Twitter at mhsrtnews, covers events through photography on Instagram at mhsrtnews, livestreams many sports events and produces a live daily broadcast called RTTV.
“We’ve really tried to figure out how to best serve our readers and our viewers,” Kady said. “What makes me proud of our efforts is that we were still able to win while sticking to what is most important.”
As digital media became more of a component, the award categories have also shifted to mirror current trends. New categories include best online storytelling, best website and best blog; these are new to the competition, emerging around only four years ago. Kady said that one thing that he would like to see included would be a broadcast category to include some of the videos made in classes and posted on the websites.
“A lot of what we do is broadcast journalism, producing news pieces for the morning broadcast after the announcements,” Kady said. “It would be nice for the students who focus primarily on that type of journalism to get some sort of recognition.”
MHS senior Alyssa Klink, an executive producer of RTTV, Round Table Media’s broadcast platform, and a two-year veteran of the awards ceremonies, is pleased with the direction the awards and MHS’s program is heading.
Other awards earned by MHS students were:
Kate Leckie Excellence in News Writing: third place, Harry Plunkett; honorable mention, Katie Russell.
Best Feature Story: second place, Kiley Hill; third place, Clara Tam.
Best Column on a State or National Subject: third place, Kim Fleming; honorable mention, Daniel Pirrone.
Best Review of Music, TV show or Movie: second place (tie), Alyssa Klink and Kim Fleming.
Best Sports Feature: second place, Garrett Baker.
Best News Photography: third place, Sydney Shipe; honorable mention, Adrienne Lowery.
Skip Lawrence Excellence in Feature Photography: second place, Maya Aylor.
Best Sports Photography: second place, Hannah Prensky; honorable mention, Evan Ruderman.
Best Online Blog/Column: second place, Aniston Morris.
