Seraph Secures Top Honors at Tablet H.S. Press Awards

The Seraph, the student newspaper of St. Francis Prep, Fresh Meadows, once again garnered top honors and was judged the best Catholic high school newspaper in the diocese at The Tablet’s 2007 High School Press Awards.

Linda Busetti Photos

Kevin Choe, St. Francis Prep junior and Seraph Editorial Board member, won four awards — the most awards won by an individual student this year. He accepted The Seraph’s General Excellence award on behalf of the staff.

Nearly 65 Catholic high school newspaper editors, reporters, photographers and cartoonists from Brooklyn and Queens, and their faculty moderators, attended the luncheon and awards ceremony at St. Francis College’s Callahan Center and Founders Hall, Downtown Brooklyn, on Wednesday, April 25.

For over two decades, The Tablet has sponsored the High School Press Awards to recognize and reward the yearlong efforts and achievements of aspiring journalists. The annual competition is open to all 20 Catholic high schools in Brooklyn and Queens.

Twelve school newspapers submitted entries for consideration this year: The Stanner, Archbishop Molloy H.S.; The Current/The Crusader Word, Cathedral Prep Seminary; The Royal Times, Christ the King H.S.; The Lance, Holy Cross H.S.; The Mariel, The Mary Louis Academy; The Sentinel, Msgr. McClancy Memorial H.S.; Excalibur, Nazareth Regional H.S.; Veritas, St. Agnes Academic H.S.; Edmund Eagle, St. Edmund Prep High School; The Seraph, St. Francis Prep School; Crescent Tower Owl, St. John’s Prep H.S. and for the first time in many years, The Beacon, Stella Maris H.S.

Students could submit up to two entries in each of 10 categories, which were judged by Tablet Editor Ed Wilkinson and The Tablet Editorial Staff. In all, 43 winners were named.

The Seraph staff captured 11 awards, including the top slot in the News, Community-Related Editorial, Editorial Cartoon and General Excellence categories. The Stanners secured nine awards and The Sentinel men snared seven awards.

Mariel collected four awards. The Current was close on Mariel’s heels with three awards, and The Lance and Veritas collected two apiece. The Crescent Tower Owl, The Beacon, The Royal Times, Edmund Eagle and Nazareth garnered one award each.

Colleague Remembered

The Tablet Staff took a moment during the award distribution to remember their colleague and friend, reporter Roger Payne, who passed away last August.
Tablet readers valued his informative articles but it was his Up Front and Personal columns chronicling his daily battle with brain cancer that truly captivated readers’ hearts.

In his memory and honor, The Tablet renamed the Best Column Award and presented the inaugural Roger Payne Memorial Award for Best Column to Cathedral Prep seniors Daniel Kingsley and James Landi, who penned Point-Counterpoint for The Current.

St. Francis College President Dr. Frank Macchiarola and Dennis McDermott, director of alumni relations, extended their congratulations to the all of the young journalists for their endeavors and offered words of encouragement for future success.

The highlight of the afternoon event was a talk from Pulitzer Prize-winner Charles Hanley, special correspondent for the Associated Press International Desk in New York.

Brooklyn-born Hanley is an alumnus of Bishop Loughlin M.H.S., Fort Greene, and St. Bonaventure University, where he earned a bachelor of arts in journalism. He joined the AP in 1968 and has filed stories from more than 80 countries, including Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s won several journalism awards with his AP colleagues, including a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism and a George Polk Award for reporting on the U.S. military’s killing of refugees at No Gun Ri, South Korea, in 1950.

Charles Hanley

He outlined his career path and shared some experiences he’s had locally and overseas while working for the AP. He also told the young men and women about a significant learning experience he had while serving as sports editor of Bishop Loughlin’s student publication, The Jamesonian.

During his Jamesonian days, he wrote an article about an incident regarding the basketball team. He regretfully admitted that he did not interview the coach for his story and later learned that some things he printed, believing they were accurate and coming from a reputable source, were not true.

“Journalism is simply searching for the truth — but there’s nothing simple about it; it’s complex,” he said.

Hanley’s advice was to be thorough, fair, use good judgment and “resist the temptation of sensationalizing” when accepting and executing any assignment. He gave one instance of an AP assignment he turned down because he didn’t want to sensationalize a particular tragedy. Hanley chose to follow his moral compass while another reporter covered the story.

He said the responsibility of a journalist is not to sensationalize events, but rather keep their eye on the powerful — people and institutions and report the truth.
The seasoned correspondent then answered students’ and moderators’ questions about college courses for aspiring journalists, issues of censorship, editor/reporter relationships and challenges in the field.

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The Tablet high School Press Awards 2007

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