The National Scholastic Press Association announced national individual and school broadcast winners the week of Sept. 5. MHS1, Elliot Parkman, Alex Kinsinger and Jordan Mordecai topped the list of award winners.

For the third time MHS1 was named a Broadcast Pacemaker Finalist. Both times before, MHS1 won the Pacemaker. They will find out in November at their convention in Minneapolis about this one.

“We’ve won Pacemaker before, but it was nerve-wracking waiting for the results,” producer Joel Quinones said. “When we found out we won again, we felt a sigh of relief and feelings of joy.”

Senior Alex Kinsinger and junior Jordan Mordecai are finalists for National Broadcast Feature Story of the Year.

“The story was about my friend who does falconry,” Alex said of the story they did on Ryan Mitchell.

Their story was one of 115 entered and judged on content, coverage, writing, editing and recording.

“I was really  shocked when I heard I was a finalist,” Jordan said. “I knew that the story was good, but I didn’t think it was going to be nationally good.”

Elliot Parkman is a finalist for the National Feature Photo of the Year.  He’s the first finalist in photography for MHS.

“I was having a pretty terrible day,” Elliot said. “I just came to yearbook class and then (student teacher) Ms. Maddi Williams told me I had won. Then it was just like all this praise. We all gathered around and just looked at the photo.”

The photo is of Officer Curtis Logan arm wrestling JJ Johnson at the homecoming carnival and is on pages 22-23 in The Lion 2011. At the time, Elliot wasn’t thinking “award” when he shot the photograph.

“ I just wanted to get up close and get a good angle,” Elliot said.  “I didn’t think it would turn out to be a great picture.”

Of the 1,047 photo entries, Elliot’s shot made it into the top five. The photos were judged on technical quality, artistic value and journalistic content.

Finalists will be ranked first through fifth place and announced in Minneapolis at the fall convention that both staff will attend.

Six other broadcast students were listed as honorable mention.

“I was really proud because we’ve had several honorable mentions in the past,” broadcast adviser Alyssa Armentrout said. “but never like this before.”

Honorable mention winners were Jacob Judd, Bill Kemsley, Austin Syme for their wrestling story; Andrew Wilson for his story on Chinese classes by Skype; and Savannah Farrell and Maya Flippen for Facebook Rappers.

story by Sarah Martin

photo by Elliot Parkman