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, 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.

Along with the student paper’s recognition, several students received Gold Circle Awards from Columbia 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, Antonova and 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, 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 four 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 The Fourth Estate, please contact journalism instructor Trish McHale at [email protected] or 805.687.2461 x317.

Published in the Noozhawk 9/30/2013 written by  Jennifer Zacharias is a publicist representing Laguna Blanca School.