Berlin High School Newspaper Wins First Place In National Contest

BERLIN, CT — Berlin High School's student newspaper is among the first-place winners in a nationwide student newspaper competition — for the second year in a row.

The newspaper, called the Redcoat Review, earned a first-place award in the "newspaper" category of the 2022 American Scholastic Press Association's annual contest, which judges student yearbooks, magazines and newspapers.

Staff submitted the first two Redcoat Review editions of the 2021-22 school year to the contest. They earned 905 points out of a possible 1,000, and judges gave the staff's page design and editing a perfect score.

"You have an excellent school newspaper, which shows the creativity and journalistic knowledge of your editors, reporters, writers, photographers...and advisor(s)," one of the competition's judges wrote in a letter to the school.

The newspaper's staff is made up of around 35 students and three advisors. It's run as a club that meets after school weekly and puts out four editions each school year.

Students complete every step of the reporting process — brainstorming/pitching stories, conducting interviews, writing rough drafts, editing the stories, taking photos, laying out the paper and designing its pages.