Feather earns 10th NSPA award nomination in 14 years, First Class, CSPA Gold Medalist

Over the past 14 years, The Feather Online earned several awards and recognitions from both the CSPA and NSPA. Ever since the 2005-2006 school year, The Feather has earned six Online Pacemaker awards from the NSPA and 8 Digial News Gold Crowns from the CSPA.

Along with these various accomplishments, The Feather earned the Best of Show Publication Website Small School award in the 2013 school year. The Feather continues to compete using a customized, original and unique WordPress template.

This school year, The Feather earned a Pacemaker Finalist nomination from the NSPA for the fourth time since 2006. This comes the same year the publication earned of First Class with three Marks of Distinction in an NSPA critique with a score of 477/510 points, Feb. 11.

In this critique, judge Brian Higgins, adviser of the Wingspan online newspaper in Frisco, Texas, said The Feather is described as a news site capable of telling the stories of the students at Fresno Christian.

“The Feather is such an impressive digital publication,” judge Higgins said. “The coverage is wide ranging and in depth with excellent reporting and research. Multimedia is seamlessly interwoven into many stories. Categories are creative and topics are diverse. It is the complete package. In addition to the outstanding coverage, writing, design and photography, what is distinctive is the personal emphasis in concept. This book is all about the students at Fresno Christian School and their lives, their thoughts, their hopes and dreams.”

The week before, The Feather earned a CSPA Gold Medalist and three All-Columbian Honors in the annual critique for its 2019 edition, Feb. 3. The campus newspaper earned 982/1000 points in one of the paper’s highest score ever from CSPA.

The following tweet features the announcement of The Feather’s nomination for an NSPA Pacemaker, Feb. 6.

Thank you for honoring #thefeather today @NSPA. We are thrilled to be a part of such a prestigious group of #onlinehighschoolnewspapers! #PacemakerFinalist https://t.co/ZhXJ28S0bn

— The Feather Online (@thefeather) February 6, 2020

This school year, juniors Addison Schultz and Vijay Stephen took over The Feather as editors-in-chief. Taking on the role during her third year on The Feather, Schultz was initially surprised by the nomination.

“When I heard that we got nominated for a Pacemaker award,” Schultz said, “I was really shocked because of the critique we received from the CSPA was a little lower than what we expected. Now that we have this nomination, I am really grateful to the whole team for pushing through. I recognize that we had some challenges this year, but as a team we were able to overcome our personal obstacles to benefit the team as a whole.”

In his first year on the staff, Shane Phillips, ’23, joined without knowledge of the potential to win national awards. Phillips feels honored to have the potential in winning a Pacemaker award during his first year on the staff.

“When I first joined The Feather,” Phillips said, “I didn’t know about any chance to win an award. To be a first-year Feather member, it has been very stressful figuring out how to get articles done on time and transitioning from junior high to high school. It feels so good to have hard work pay off and I feel very honored.”

The Feather will press on this semester and is looking forward to participating in Scholastic Journalism Week, Feb. 24-27, and hope to add depth to the NSPA Online Pacemaker Finalist nomination. Read Feather recaps 2019 JEA/NSPA Spring Journalism conference in Anaheim, Feather staffers tour professional ABC7 broadcast facility, The Feather takes SoCal: Recap #1, Video: The Feather Online spring 2019 trip, and Feather staffers explore Warner Bros. Studios for more information.

Kyle Clem can be reached via Twitter @KyleClem5 and via email.

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