![[Video] 100th CSPA Spring Journalism Conference](https://thefeather.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240308-cspa-crown-002.jpg)
After months of preparation and competition, The Feather Online received a Gold Crown Award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) at its 87th annual Spring National Convention, March 16-18.
The function, which was held at Columbia University in New York, NY, ended on March 18 with an awards ceremony in the Roone Arledge Auditorium of Lerner Hall.
At this event, Edmund J. Sullivan, executive director for CSPA, announced the nine Gold Crowns and nine Silver Crowns for online high school newspapers. Only one other online newspaper from California — The Paly Voice of Palo Alto High School — received a Gold Crown this year.
According to the CSPA web site, “1,434 magazines, newspapers, yearbooks and online publications of the current CSPA members were eligible to enter the Crown Awards. Online news media were judged at Columbia in February 2011.”
The Gold Crown is the highest award given by the CSPA, often considered the equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize, with the Silver Crown ranking second. In total, there were 157 Crown Award winners in magazines, print newspapers, yearbooks and online newspapers. All high schools in North America, regardless of size, are eligible for the competitions.
This award marks the second Gold Crown and the third consecutive online Crown The Feather has won, as the newspaper was previously recognized with a Silver Crown in 2009 and a Gold Crown in 2010.
A portion of the staff journeyed to New York earlier in the week to both sit in on and present sessions at the conference. Attendance for the convention was 3,117 delegates who represented 346 schools and organizations in 37 states, the District of Columbia and Canada, according to CSPA.
Editor-in-Chief Austin Ward, ’11, credits a number of improvements to the success that The Feather has had this year.
“I think this year’s victory can be attributed to a number of small improvements. In my opinion, our writing was very good — we had some pieces this year that were truly outstanding — which I think has always been one of The Feather’s strengths,” Ward said. “Also, we designed a new, better website for the blogs and had a variety of interesting blog topics.
“Then, we made a few changes to centralize our paper, such as moving all
Alexandra Barisic • Sep 7, 2011 at 12:02 am
I went to the Chipotle in Fig Garden Village because it is close to my house. When we got there, the line was wrapping around the building so we drove to the location at River Park. That line too was extremely long and since it was already eight-thirty we didn’t wait in line because I feared the nine o’clock deadline would be expired. So sad to say, I was not able to support the cause. But I did try!