Michaela Lamb

The Staff of Fort Osage High School News Media stand in front of Jesse Hall, on the University of Missouri campus. The staff had to arrive at the high school at 6 AM in order to get to Mizzou on time to start the day.

On March 27th, 2024, Fort Osage journalism students attended the annual state Scholastic Journalism day at the University of Missouri-Columbia which was hosted by the Missouri Interscholastic Journalism Association. The event was divided into both competitions and info sessions about journalism. Sophomore Broadcaster Skyler Hoppins enjoyed meeting other journalists.

“It was really fun, we had good energy all around,” Hoppins said, “The campus was really beautiful and all the people were nice there – I met Pete Grigsby with KMBC9 News and he was really respectful.”

This year’s keynote speaker was Hannah Wise, the assistant manager editor of engagement and experimentation at the Kansas City Star newspaper. She focused her speech on how she managed the coverage of the Taylor Swift Eras tour by the Kansas City Star, and how that was taken and used by newspapers across the McClatchy newspaper space. Junior Newspaper Reporter Averi Van Winkle appreciated that she learned more about how to engage an audience.

“It was really cool, she had a really interesting perspective,” Van Winkle said, “on how to incorporate an audience into your writing and knowing how to make a story more attention-grabbing.”

Students then proceeded to their chosen sessions. One of the speakers in the sessions is Cathy Kuhlmeier, the high school newspaper editor during the Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier Supreme Court case in 1983, which decided that high schools are (at a federal level) allowed to censor student newspapers. Junior Newspaper Reporter Samantha Purinton liked that she was able to learn more info about the famous case.

“I think it was a cool opportunity in itself,” Purinton said, “learning that the reason she wasn’t able to make it to the supreme court case was that her lawyer didn’t contact her because she was at college, or that the lawyer that they had wasn’t doing her job correctly and that ultimately lost the case.”

Fort Osage High School ultimately came home with eleven awards:

Fort Osage had six students compete in on-site competitions, including McKenna Gilpin, Hanna Johnston, and Neveah McNew for Broadcasting, Riley Morris for Photography, Dylan Daugherty for News Writing (Newspaper/Online News), and Jazzy Walker for Strategic Communications. Junior Broadcaster McKenna Gilpin was excited to win first place.

“I think it was a really special moment,” Gilpin said, “especially because, we didn’t really know about it until we got there, so we had a short amount of time to do it and we still took first.”

Fort Osage currently plans to participate in next year’s Journalism day contest, with high hopes among the news staff to take home more awards.