News

MacJournalism captures three Star Awards, including online Gold, plus six Tops in Texas honors

Shield, Knight staffs reap individual awards at annual ILPC state journalism convention

Adviser Dave Winter, co-editor in chief Sophie Ryland and staff reporter Alex Dowd pose with the staff’s STAR awards and Ryland’s Dewitt C. Reddick Memorial Scholarship, all received at the ILPC final awards ceremony on Sunday at the LBJ Auditorium. Photo by Caleb Melville.

MacJournalism news team
May 5, 2019

MacJournalism had a good weekend at the 2019 ILPC spring journalism conference at UT. On Saturday, the combined staffs of the Shield newspaper and Knight yearbook combined to earn six Tops in Texas awards and 63 5A Individual Achievement Awards. On Sunday, MacJournalism won three Star Awards in the same year for the first time in school history. The Shield Online was one of two scholastic websites to win a Gold Star Award for online newspapers. It was the first Gold Star for the website in its young history. The print newspaper won a Silver Star, and the yearbook won a Bronze Star. Senior co-editor-in-chief Sophie Ryland won the Dewitt C. Reddick Memorial Scholarship, worth $1,000.

To win a Tops in Texas award, a student journalist or group of student journalists must first win a first-place awards in their for their UIL classification. McCallum is a 5A school so all of the six Tops in Texas award winners essentially won first place twice. First, they won first place in 5A, then they won first place in competition with the other first-place winners in the other five UIL classifications.

We have to verify this but we are fairly sure six is a school record, certainly the best that McCallum has achieved in the four years at Mr. Winter has served as adviser.

The weekend of state journalism competitions started off well with sophomore Bella Russo and junior Kristen Tibbetts representing MacJournalism in the feature writing competition at the UIL State Academic contest. Tibbetts placed fifth among 5A competitors, making her the first McCallum student journalist to place at UIL State during Mr. Winter’s tenure as adviser. The final competition of ILPC weekend also went well for McCallum as sophomore Caleb Melville captured first place in the on-site photography competition for his three-image photo essay about photojournalist John Moore’s Sunday keynote address. Junior staff reporter Stella Shenkman earned honorable mention honors in the same competition.

The complete list of MacJournalism winners is listed below. Click the hyperlinks with each winner to see the winning entries. We did not link to the current yearbook winners. That’s a surprise for later this month. 🙂

2018-2019 ILPC Conference

Star Awards

Gold Star, The Shield Online

Silver Star, The Shield

Bronze Star, The Knight

Dewitt C. Reddick Memorial Scholarship

Sophie Ryland

Tops in Texas Winners

Charlie Holden, print infographic/sidebar

Charlie Holden, print news page/spread design

Madison Olsen, online general news photo

Madison Olsen, print general news photo

Margaret Olson, yearbook captions

Sophie Ryland, Madison Olsen, Tomas Marerro, Jasmine Barerra, Kristen Pacotti and Robert Hall, online multimedia package

2018-2019 5A Individual Achievement Awards

First place

Elena Henderson and Kennedy Schuelke, yearbook sports feature story

Charlie Holden, print infographic/sidebar

Charlie Holden, print news page/spread design

Gregory James, current yearbook story

Caleb Melville, online sports feature photo

Madison Olsen, online general news photo

Madison Olsen, print general news photo

Margaret Olson, yearbook captions

Margaret Olson, Townes Jones, Abigail Salizar, current yearbook club/organization-focused spread

Bella Russo, print cartoon

Bella Russo, print feature photo

Sophie Ryland, Madison Olsen, Tomas Marerro, Jasmine Barerra, Kristen Pacotti and Robert Hall, online multimedia package

Mia Terminella, entertainment page/spread design or entertainment page/spread design (we aren’t sure)

Kristen Tibbetts, print news feature

Second place

Ian Clennan and Gabby Sherwood, current yearbook student life-focused spread

Coco Clouse, Gabi Williams and Kien Johnson, current yearbook academic-focused spread

Grayson Cruise and Steven Tibbetts, online news writing

Gregory James, online news feature

Mira MacLaurin, current yearbook sports-focused spread

Caleb Melville, print sports action photo

Julie Robertson, print page one newsmagazine design

Bella Russo, print photo portfolio

Sophie Ryland, print news feature

Sarah Slaten, online personal opinion column

Third place

Emma Baumgardner, Ian Clennan, Charlie Holden, Gregory James, Kien Johnson, Mira MacLaurin, Lily McCormick, Madison Olsen, Bella Russo, Sarah Slaten and Kristen Tibbetts, online photo slide show

Jazzabelle Davishines, print news

Jazzabelle Davishines, Bella Russo and Kristen Tibbetts, print headlines

Anna McClellan, print sports feature photo

Grace Nugent, online sports feature story

Bella Russo, online student artwork/cartoon or online student artwork/cartoon (we are not sure which one won)

Bella Russo, online entertainment photo

Bella Russo, print entertainment photo

Bella Russo, sports page/spread design

Sarah Slaten, online personal column

Staff, yearbook headlines