Discussing media, winning awards

Fifteen members of The Tattler, the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway (HAFTR) High School newspaper, boarded a bus on March 9, and went to Adelphi University for Press Day featuring the Quill Awards.

Karen Wolf, our faculty advisor, accompanied Jack Eisenberg, Daniel Maron, Lizzie Wallach, Isaac Adlerstein, Josh Hirsch, Rachel Sacks, Moshe Weiner, Amanda Schorr, Daniel Neckonoff, Israel Lallouz, Emily Kornblum, Chloe Gottlieb, Margot Bokor, and me to the event. Adelphi hosts this annual event for Long Island high school journalists on their school newspaper’s staff.

The day began with a panel of local journalists, journalism professors, and politicians who discussed this year’s theme media and politics. The panel members talked about how the media influences politics through the information that people receive from different media outlets. The floor was opened to students to ask the panelists questions. After the panel, participating schools were divided into two groups. Half of the groups went outside for a tour of the beautiful Adelphi campus and the other group held discussion sessions with their advisors and one other school.

HAFTR’s tour of Adelphi’s campus led by a very enthusiastic current student. We saw two notable facilities: First, we visited the sports complex, complete with an indoor pool, indoor track, and fully outfitted gym. Next we went to a classroom that had been repurposed for a newscast. The studio had a green screen, movable light system, three cameras, and a sound system.

Back at the main event, we went into a classroom for the discussion. The session was led by Wolf and the advisor of the school with which we were paired. The questions examined the theme from the panel discussion and the most talked about subject of this topic — Donald Trump. We talked about Trump’s unorthodox way of using the media to his advantage, whether the media had become more partisan in its coverage and whether the media has been doing a good job during this primary cycle. Adelphi provided a kosher lunch for us.

After lunch, the Quill Awards were presented. The Quill Awards are given to individual students and newspapers that showed excellence in topics for which they were nominated. Two HAFTR students were recognized for awards from a large pool of nominees: Jack Eisenberg won Honorable Mention for Best Opinion Piece and Josh Hirsh was awarded third place for best news article. We are so proud that they were recognized for their outstanding writing. The Adelphi event was a great opportunity to network with fellow student journalists and experience a professional conference in a university setting.