An area yearbook staff is headed to New York next week to receive what's unofficially known as the "Pulitzer Prize of student journalism." Pleasant Grove High School's 2015 Hawk has been nominated for the Pacemaker award, given by the National Scholastic Press Association for excellence in student journalism.
This is the 11th straight year PGHS has been named a Pacemaker finalist. It's also the 12th year the Hawk has been on the Crown list to receive an award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.
"Our goal is to tell the story of the year for our student body," said Charla Harris, who has been heading the journalism department at Pleasant Grove since the mid-1980s. "I think we do that really well."
Seventy-one middle and high schools are competing for this year's award. Judges look for exemplary writing, editing, design and production in the creation of a superior student publication.
Harris said the students put a plan in place for the yearbook the summer before the school year begins, to tell the student body's story year after year.
One of the Hawk's four editors-in-chief, Lauren Allison, attributed much of the success to the school's journalism program, where she said she sees excellence and passion in the newspaper, yearbook and PGTV.
"We want it to be the very best that we can do," she said. "I think that's the same each year. It's going to be as good as we can make it."
Emily Engstrom is editor of the school newspaper, the Edge, which has also won Pacemaker awards. She recognized the influence of the journalism program
"I think honestly, you need journalism skills to do well in life," she said. "To write college essays, to give a speech, to interview for scholarships. To do well in any aspiration you have in life, you have to have these skills."
Lauren Davis, Hawk editor-in-chief, said she feels a sense of pride when she opens the 2015 Hawk, knowing those storytelling pages are the result of an award-winning legacy.
"You open a page and you know that you did this," she said. "You took the pictures. You wrote the captions, You wrote the stories. This is something that you did. You did for the whole entire school. Eventually, the nation."
The Hawk has also been inducted into the NSPA Hall of Fame, which is given to a yearbook receiving top ratings from judges for 10 of the past 11 years.
"We got top rankings 11 years straight," Harris said. "There are not a lot of schools that accomplish that. We qualified two years ago and picked it up last year."
This year's editors-in-chief were on the yearbook staff last year, and they are four of the yearbook's eight staff members traveling to New York for the awards. Last year's seniors who worked on the yearbook are eagerly awaiting a text from Harris, ready to know how many awards their publication has won.
"They'll come back from college, and they'll want to touch it," Harris said.
The key to regularly producing the national award-winning publications is attention to detail, she added.
"I think that sometimes people don't see all the little pieces that work together," Harris said. "That's what makes excellent school newspapers and yearbooks stand out. We pay attention to the details."