A Year in Review: Midtown Journalism and Communications Programs

Welcome to the Journalism and Communications Booster Club newsletter! In this article, we are incredibly excited to highlight the successes of each program throughout this year. 

The Orator has sold over 839 yearbooks so far!

The Southerner has tripled monthly digital engagement to 34,000 monthly views and sold 282 newspaper subscriptions!

KnightView hit over 100,000 views on YouTube!

The Unmasking increased their sale of literary magazines by 900%!

GSPA Conference and Awards Ceremony

The Georgia Scholastic Press Association hosts two conferences every year, one in the fall and one in the spring! At these conferences, students can learn from professional journalists, get critiques on their work, and attend award ceremonies.

In the fall, both The Orator, The Unmasking, and The Southerner staff attended, totaling over 50 students. At this conference, four Midtown students presented. Brennan Fritts and Zelda Lerner of The Southerner presented “Reporting on District News,” and Fairlie Mercer and Audrey Lyons of The Southerner presented “Let’s Get the Facts Straight about Commentary.”

Additionally, throughout the year, Zelda Lerner served as one of 10 GSPA Ambassadors, acting as a liaison between GSPA and high school media programs and providing insight and ideas to GSPA.

In the spring, both The Southerner and Knight View staff attended, totaling over 40 students. At this conference, Fairlie Mercer and Audrey Lyons of The Southerner presented “Press, Politics and Protests,” Sierra Pape of The Southerner presented “Truth with Care: Reporting Sensitive News Respectfully,” and Zelda Lerner of the Southerner co-led the editors' roundtable.

At the Spring conference, there is an awards ceremony for all publications in the state! Find the awards our programs earned below.

The Southerner:

• Junior Journalist of the Year Runner-Ups: Audrey Lyons, Brennan Fritts

• Sports Game Coverage: Superior

  •  "GHSA pushes spring sports start from Jan. 8 to Jan. 27,” Farris Duwayri, The Southerner, Midtown High School

  • “GHSA considers new reclassification system, looks at success,” Sinclair Richman, The Southerner, Midtown High School

• Sports Game Coverage: All-Georgia

  • "Girls basketball finishes State Runner-Up,” Ellie Palaian, The Southerner, Midtown High School

• Sports Feature Story: All-Georgia

  • "Henley pursues yoga passion, earns certification,” Cate Barton, The Southerner, Midtown High School

• Photo Essay: All-Georgia

  • "Fire Station 19 celebrates 100 years of service,” Kate Durden, The Southerner, Midtown High School

• Superior, General Excellence, All-Georgia Newspaper, The Southerner, Midtown High School

• Superior, General Excellence News Website, The Southerner, Midtown High School

Knight View:

• All-Georgia News Package: March For Our Lives (Julia Mayi, Grant Stearsman, Laila Phelan)

• All-Georgia In-Depth News/Documentary: Jimmy Carter Tribute (Julia Mayi)

• All-Georgia Feature Package: Mollywood: The Duff (Izzy Kaiser, Kameryn Brown, Laila Phelan)

• All-Georgia Production: Knight Fight: Teachers vs. Students (Izzy Kaiser, Kameryn Brown, Laila Phelan)

• Superior Broadcast

Orator:

• Superior, Yearbook

The Unmasking:

• Superior, Literary Magazine

NSPA Conference

On Nov. 7, 2024, the Southerner and the Orator staff attended the NSPA (National Scholastic Press Association) conference in Philadelphia, where they attended several workshops and learned more about the inner workings of student journalism. Topics at the workshop ranged from investigative journalism to data collection to program to editing and to even female inclusivity in sports writing. 

At the NSPA conference, the Southerner staff received two national awards in the Best of Show awards ceremony on Nov. 9! The Southerner was ranked eighth best newspaper for a school with less than 1,800 students and fourth best website for a school with less than 1,800 students. The National Scholastic Press Association’s Best of Show competition includes hundreds of schools nationwide.

Additional Award Circuits

Beyond GSPA awards, The Southerner applies to other regional and national competitions.

This year, we had a record number of Best of Sno recognition, which is a national circuit. We have had 30 total Best of Sno so far!

From the SIPA (Southern Interscholastic Press Association), which annually awards from 13 states in the Southeast, the Southerner gained four awards. This included 1st Place award for Personality Feature (Connie Erdozain), 1st Place Column Piece (Lily Rachwalski), 2nd Place Features (Sierra Pape), and 1st Place News (Sierra Pape, Brennan Fritts). 

From CSPA (Columbia Scholastic Press Association), 

From Quill & Scroll, the Southerner is currently a finalist for 11 international journalist awards! The finalist are: News Writing (Fairlie Mercer and Audrey Lyons x2), Feature Writing (Mariam Darb and Audrey Lyons), Profile Writing (Connie Erdozain), Column Writing Non Sports (Leo Powell), Sports Game/Event Writing (Sam Silcock and Farris Duwaryi), Political Writing (Sierra Pape, Henry Moye and Connie Erdozain), Climate and Environment Writing (Brennan Fritts, Zelda Lerener, Henry Moye and Julia Barton), Beginning Writer (Leo Powell), Sports Reaction Photography (Julia Barton), and Photo Slideshow (Farris Duwayri).

From NSPA, Pacemaker Finalist, 

KnightView submitted this year to the APS Film Festival! We are excited to see the result of the awards in May!

Stella St. Clair, of both the Southerner and KnightView, was selected to represent the state of Georgia for the 2025 Al Neuharth Free Spirit and Journalism Conference. A selective program to help further journalistic knowledge by connecting with journalists, lawmakers, and other aspiring journalists. Stella will also receive a $1,000 scholarship! 

Southerner Highlights of the Year

• This year, the Southerner took on the largest staff since pre-COVID, totalling 69 staff writers! Editors and writers took on more responsibility to adjust, so that we could edit and post more stories!!

• Surrounding election day, a total of 15 Southerner reporters went to political events and polling locations to write on the local Atlanta climate. In the first semester, 19 stories were written on the election, eight of which earned Best of Sno recognition!!

• For the January issue, the Southerner created a 20-page paper instead of a 16-page one, featuring an extra 4-page insert commemorating Jimmy Carter! This took hours of additional work, with staffers working for two weeks after school and on the weekends in the journalism room. 

• This year, the Southerner rolled out its first-ever source tracking program, in an effort to increase diversity of voices in our stories. All stories from the year were continually sent into a tracking sheet that highlighted the frequency of each source and auto-generated a “no-interview” list of sources that had been used three times. This helped improve the distribution of sources across demographic areas as well! We are looking forward to solidifying this program next year!

• Noticed anything new in the recent Southerner publications? It is our new, design-heavy front page! It began with our Jimmy Carter Special edition paper and then took off. Be on the lookout for even bigger and better changes next year!

KnightView Highlights of the Year

• The Knight View crew recently redid the entire set this semester! To give our show an updated look, they repainted the back wall with yellow and red triangles.

• Several KnightView staffers attended a media day with the superintendent, where they were able to ask him questions about APS initiatives to better their coverage!

• Students in the Midtown High School SkillsUSA chapter did well in the championships portion of the 2025 State Leadership and Skills Conference. Juniors Joyous Banks and C'eonna Risby are the silver medal winners in Music Video Production. Sophomore Lylah Schaefer is the bronze medal winner in Scriptwriting. Junior Stella St. Clair is the bronze medal winner in Promotional Video.

The Orator Highlights of the Year

• This year, for the first time, the senior and the Orator’s Editor-In-Chief, Hayden Sheehan, organized a ceremony to celebrate and honor the Class of 2025’s superlatives! They brought the entire grade together and introduced and crowned each superlative in a fun and humorous way!

• Staffers attended the fall GSPA conference and NSPA conference in Philadelphia, gaining insight to contribute to their yearbook this year!

  
  

The Unmasking Highlights of the Year

• The Unmasking staff redesigned the entire magazine this year, focusing on theme development! They chose the theme “prismatic” and made a cohesive and professional voice by organizing based on color, creating a gradient spectrum/

• They increased outreach dramatically, gaining submissions from external sources! 

• Sales were boosted by 900% so far, and they plan to sell 200 copies of the magazine!

• The magazine included special interviews from authors Karin Slaughter and Jenna Levine and former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.

• Starting in May, the Virginia Highland Bookstore and The Unmasking are collaborating to sell Unmasking copies in-store!

• In February for Valentine’s Day, the Unmasking staff did a special project called Love Lines, where they delivered poetic surprises around the school. For 6-16 dollars, they delivered a flower, a poem, and a personal message!

• This will be the first year that they submit their final product to state and national awards besides GSPA!

Booster Club Launch

Finally, Southerner staffers Audrey Lyons, Fairlie Mercer and Sierra Pape founded the Midtown Journalism and Communications Booster Club with the help of the parent board. We are endlessly grateful for the support we've had from the teacher sponsors and Dr. Bockman. This booster club will help raise money for all four programs, improve the subscription process for the Southerner and the Unmasking and increase collaboration between our amazing programs. We're so excited to see what the next year will hold!

Thank you for reading — and for supporting the future of journalism at Midtown. We are endlessly proud of everything our students have accomplished this year and can’t wait for what’s to come!