Kansas Student Journalist of the Year

The Susan Massy Award is given annually to the Kansas Student Journalist of the Year, the top individual prize for high school journalists in the state. Susan Massy taught for 44 years in Kansas schools, including 42 years at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School. She taught students in yearbook, along with newspaper and online publications. As a longtime non-voting KSPA board member, Massy connected the state organization to the Journalism Education Association. In that role, she helped many winners of the state’s Student Journalist of the Year contest excel in the national contest.

Kansas high school journalists have an opportunity to showcase their talents through this competition. Students who wish to enter the contest must submit an application form as well as a digital portfolio that will explain to the judges who they are as a student journalist. All application content and evaluation are based on the JEA Journalist of Year contest.

The Kansas Student Journalist of the Year committee chooses winners in three classifications: 1A/2A, 3A/4A and 5A/6A. Each of those winners receives a check for $750. In addition, the overall winner receives an extra $500 (for a total of $1,250) and becomes the Kansas Student Journalist of the Year. Only one overall winner is named for each year.

The winning portfolio from the state Journalist of the Year competition is sent to the national level for judging. The state winners are recognized at the JEA/NSPA Spring National High School Journalism Convention, and national winners are announced at the convention’s awards ceremonies. Scholarship funds at the national level are $4,000 for the top winner and $1,200 for each of the five finalists.

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

The application form requires each applicant to submit personal information, contact information, a transcript, letters of recommendation, resume and personal narrative. Because you are uploading documents and images to the form, please be patient when submitting as it takes up to 30 seconds for the files to upload. The form requires this information:

LINK TO AN ONLINE PORTFOLIO: This online portfolio of your work may be hosted online as a website (for instance with Weebly, Wix or WordPress). Printed and mailed portfolios are no longer accepted. Portfolios should be submitted as a URL. See below for more details.

AN ACTION SHOT: An image of you at work as a journalist (for instance, a candid image of you working at a publication night, on assignment reporting, etc).

YOUR HIGH SCHOOL TRANSCRIPT: Official high school transcript or a counselor’s statement, including journalism classes taken, grades and current GPA. Student should be a high school senior and should have an overall GPA of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. Please upload as a pdf (for instance, scan your transcript and save it as a pdf).

LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION: Three letters from people people familiar with your work as a journalist. No letter should exceed two pages in length. Upload letters as pdfs.

RESUME: Resumes should be submitted as pdfs.

PERSONAL NARRATIVE ESSAY: To align with the national contest, we will use the same criteria. The applicant should reflect on their scholastic media experience and how it shaped both current success and future goals. The writing should also address challenges that the applicant faced along the way and how these were solved. The writing should exhibit the applicant’s strong and vibrant voice. While there is no word limit, most national winners’ essays are around 1,250-1,300 words.

COMPLETE THE ONLINE FORM

• Be prepared to fill out the application in a single sitting, as there isn’t an option to save your work and continue later.
• Compile your resume, transcript and letters of recommendation and personal narrative as PDFs to upload separately when prompted as part of the application process.
• Be prepared to copy the URL of your online portfolio with work samples when prompted.

CREATE THE PORTFOLIO

• Work examples are part of a presentation where candidates can showcase their progress over time as a student journalist.
• Applicants can choose any platform on which they wish to present their work examples.
• The applicant’s personality should be evident in the entry. The student should choose a design/concept for the portfolio.
• Broadcast/video samples should be no longer than 15 minutes in length.
• Work examples in the online portfolio should be organized according to the following categories:
  • Reporting and Writing
  • Editing, Leadership and Team Building
  • Web and Social Media
  • Design
  • Broadcast Journalism
  • Photojournalism
  • Law, Ethics and News Literacy
  • Marketing and Audience Engagement
  • Commitment to Diversity
• Applicants aren’t required to have samples from all of the categories. However, well-rounded applicants should showcase the diversity of their talents to the judging committee.
• The entry will also be judged on two additional criteria:
  • Organization and Documentation
  • Personal Narrative. The personal narrative does not need to be included in the online portfolio.
• Review the KSPA judging rubric at this link. It is based on the JEA rubric for the national contest. Please use this as a guide and a checklist when creating your entry.
• Each work example for the portfolio should be labeled with this information:
  • The content category
  • Evidence of use in publications for published work
  • Any awards the work earned in contests
  • An explanation/reasoning for each example. This should include the applicant’s explanation about the specific assignment. Include any difficulties encountered with the assignment and special circumstances affecting it. Explanation should be less than 100 words in length, easy to read and should explain why the entry is important and was chosen for the portfolio.