Grytte Staff Gets the Gold

The Grytte staff at the 2019 Columbia Scholastic Press Association Conference. The December 2019 issue of the Grytte won first place with special merit in the American Scholastic Press Association’s contest. (Vanina Feldzstein)

The Grytte won first place with special merit, the highest award possible, in the American Scholastic Press Association’s 2019-2020 contest for school newspapers.

“After six years at the Grytte, winning this award is a great honor considering the progress we made. It showed all of us on the staff that our hard work paid off.” Fazeel K. ’21 said, an editor for the newspaper.

The American Scholastic Press Association runs the Annual Scholastic Press Contest, which includes contests for yearbooks and magazines in addition to newspapers. The contest ranks high school publications into three tiers: third place, second place, and first place. First place with special merit is available for those publications that demonstrate “special and outstanding design and content.”

The competition is graded on a scale of 1000 points, of which the Grytte won 960 for the 2019-2020 school year. The 1000 points are further broken down into categories for content coverage, page design, general planning, art, editing, and creativity.

The ASPA judge who scored the Grytte commented on the newspaper’s effectiveness and also suggested potential areas of improvement.

“You have an excellent school newspaper, which shows the creativity and journalistic knowledge of your editors, reporters, writers… and advisor,” the judge reported. In terms of improvement, the judge commented, “try to establish a complete editorial, or opinion, page. Include at least one unsigned editorial… polls, surveys, columns, letter from the student body president and/or principal… and staffbox.”

Last year was the first time the Grytte entered the ASPA competition, but the newspaper has entered a different competition run by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association in the past. In this competition, the newspaper received gold, the highest award, for the past two years. The results of this competition have not yet been released for this year.

Since the publication of the Grytte’s December 2019 print edition, which was submitted to the ASPA competition, the newspaper has transitioned to an online format due to the restrictions imposed by Covid-19.

“Publishing our content online has opened up a lot of opportunities for the Grytte, but I’m also looking forward to being able to publish print editions again whenever we’re able to,” Alexander R. ’21 said, a member of the Grytte for five years.