{"id":113928,"date":"2015-03-08T15:52:26","date_gmt":"2015-03-08T21:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/power-of-the-press\/"},"modified":"2015-03-08T15:52:26","modified_gmt":"2015-03-08T21:52:26","slug":"power-of-the-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/power-of-the-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Power of the Press"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"David
David Gonzales, Matt Sanchez, Elaine Le, Adrian Opsahl and Deven Whaley (not pictured) are the staff of the Panther Press at M-CHS. The school newspaper recently won 16 awards, including first place for newspaper.<\/span>Sam Green\/Cortez Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The small but mighty journalism class at Montezuma-Cortez High School reaped the benefits of a year\u2019s hard work after receiving 16 awards, including first place for best overall newspaper, at the Colorado Mesa University 25th Media Day awards ceremony.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first time in 12 years that the Panther Press has been given the honor of best high school newspaper, and it\u2019s an accomplishment that faculty adviser Debra McVicker credits to her hard-working five-student staff.<\/p>\n

The staff is working on its fourth and final issue of the year, a bittersweet moment for senior Matt Sanchez, who took over as editor-in-chief this year. Sanchez says he\u2019s most proud of the newspaper\u2019s use of graphics and design elements to tell stories. On the heels of the Panther Press\u2019 big win, Sanchez is sad to say goodbye to the newsroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually kind of depressing,\u201d said Sanchez. \u201cIt\u2019s like a big chapter of my life is coming to a close.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staff writer and cartoonist Elaine Le, also a senior, reluctantly joined the staff at the urging of McVicker.<\/p>\n

Le won a first place award in cartooning this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to draw and give them to Mrs. McVicker, and she recruited me to draw and then got me to write to help out. It\u2019s a lot of work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Over the years, the journalism elective has gotten overlooked by most students, McVicker says, which makes recruiting for a full staff difficult. In her five years on as newspaper adviser, she\u2019s coached a staff of as many as 12 students, but this year only five signed on for the course.<\/p>\n

When the school went to block scheduling, the number of elective credits students must take in order to graduate dropped from 14 to nine, making it tough for journalism \u2014 a class with a lot more extra-curricular responsibility \u2014 to compete with other lighter courses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do struggle with recruiting. Most kids just don\u2019t have room in their schedule or don\u2019t want to do the extra work, writing, and meeting deadlines,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we have fields trips and press days, and try to make it as much fun as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Junior and managing editor David Gonzales-Overton said the staff\u2019s size was really emphasized at the recent Media Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt one of the round tables, a lot of schools were saying \u2018We have 24 students and only 5 computers,\u2019 but we have the opposite problem,\u201d he said, gesturing to the two full rows of empty student computer workstations.<\/p>\n

Overton plans to stick with journalism next year and possibly in the future and hopes more students fill the places of Sanchez and Le as they go on to graduate this May.<\/p>\n

\n

The awards<\/h4>\n

Monday, March 2 during the Colorado Mesa University 25th Media Days, the Montezuma-Cortez High School received 16 individual awards and first place for the best overall newspaper. The last time the Panther Press won the award was in 2003.
\n Matthew Sanchez: First place Best Feature Photography
\n Judy Ha: First place Best Sports Writing
\n Elaine Le: First place Best Newspaper Sports Photography
\n Elaine Le: First place Cartooning: Newspaper or Yearbook
\n Matthew Sanchez: First place Newspaper Page Design\/Layout
\n Adrian Opsahl: First place Newspaper Advertising Design
\n Matthew Sanchez: First place Best Graphic\/Illustration Design
\n Xavier Eddy: First place Best Column Writing
\n David Andrew Gonzales-Overton: Second place Best News Photography
\n Elaine Le: Second place Best Graphic\/Illustration Design
\n Adrian Opsahl: Second place Newspaper Advertising Design
\n Xavier Eddy: Second place Best Editorial Writing
\n David Andrew Gonzales-Overton: Second place Best Sports Writing
\n Matthew Sanchez: Second place Best Feature Writing
\n Jasmine Muff: Third place Photo Contest \u2013 Sports
\n Honorable Mention: Best all around yearbook<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M-CHS newspaper wins 16 awards, including Best Newspaper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5794,5735],"tags":[21,36,3152,2579],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-news-media","tag-newspapers"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113928"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}