Embedded Files
This is some of my best work from this school year. Underlined headlines are links to online articles. All of my photos and articles can be accessed through my staff profile on the Union Street Journal website. All photos, graphics, words, and designs on this page are my own.
Denver is a hotbed of politics and protest. It seems we have marches downtown every week, and this one, in some ways, fit that pattern: a group chanting and waving political signs marched up Colfax to Capitol Hill to make their voices heard. But this event was different in that it was a time-honored Denver tradition: the annual Marade (half march, half parade), which celebrates the life of Martin Luther King Jr. It was cold – negative-temperatures cold – but I was struck by the crowd's resilience and sense of comity and community as they honored a hero. They were encouraged by local leaders, including Denver mayor Mike Johnston and Congressman Jason Crow (D-6), both of whom I had the privilege to interview after their speeches (Crow represents most of the neighborhoods that feed into my high school, so his thoughts seemed directly relevant to our student body).
This article represents a personal as well as journalistic achievement for me. I had covered protests before, but I always hesitated to take my place alongside professional reporters and approach well-known local figures. This time, when I donned my school press pass and took my camera to the front row, the security team waved me past and the Denver Gazette reporter greeted me as an equal. I found the confidence to approach local leaders and get the good quotes. Denver marched and celebrated on that cold day – and I got to capture it all through my writing and my lens.
With such a charged issue as the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict – one that polarizes us worldwide – merely reporting on it risks contention. But the discussion I covered in this article sought to promote civil conversation by bringing a rabbi and an imam together to speak to a crowd of diverse students. They focused not on hate and war, but on peace and recovery. I found it inspiring that both sides' most important goal was to make the community feel safer. In accordance with the overall message of equality and harmony, I I made sure to give voice to all "sides" of the discussion: religious leaders, students from Jewish and Muslim clubs, along with a variety of spectators. It was important to me to write this story because it wasn't just about the war but rather it was about solutions.
Best of SNO Award Winner
When I learned that two teams from the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) were coming to Denver for an exhibition game, I knew it was the perfect story for the USJ's audience. I knew many fellow students who planned to go to the game, many of whom play hockey at CCHS and in local clubs, and I knew they would be enthusiastic about encouraging participation in women's sports nationwide. The cherry on top? I landed an interview with one of the players – a goalie, originally from Colorado, who expressed her own excitement about the crowds of young girls and families who attended and the game's potential to inspire them. It's a shame Ball Arena didn't allow cameras; I made do with a cell phone and a massive crowd of passionate fans.
This story taught me a lot about sports journalism beyond the school scene, and it gave me practice writing a sports story of national importance in a way that can relate to my own local community.
Best of SNO Award Winner
There is no doubt that the Ukraine war faded from the spotlight as events like the presidential election and the Israel-Hamas conflict overshadowed it – but a group of students at Creek wanted to change that. They sold crafts like flowers and matryoshka dolls and donate the funds to a local organization that would send supplies to Ukranians. I found their cause valiant. They wanted to make a difference, even if it was through this limited effort. Club members knew (as they explained to me) that their contributions would be small in the grand scheme of things – but they wanted to show that the school still cared, and that eyes were still on Ukraine. This is perhaps the smallest story I covered this year: just a student-run stand selling handmade flowers. But it mattered to me to tell their story of initiative and commitment.
March to October. Politics can change a lot in that span of time, but those six months of 2024 were even more remarkable for President Biden's decision to drop out of the race, as I discuss in my story. The election scene changed dramatically between the USJ's two election preview stories, both of which I worked on: one in March as a sophomore, and this one in October as a junior. This story is the very definition of "big issue, small perspective." I considered a national issue through the prism of my own school's take on the contest. My primary approach was through polling; I gathered information from hundreds of students and spent hours making sure the polls were conducted and measured correctly. In the end, we got some striking results. The story explores the most important takeaway from the poll: why Biden's departure from the race convinced so many people to get off the fence and support Kamala Harris. Though the election is over and now journalists, including myself, have turned our attention to the Trump administration and its policy implications, the story offered valuable insight into the decisive shift in political preferences in my school as people made up their minds and took a stance.
In contrast to many of my stories, this article's main sourcing made use of a new methodology for me: quantitative data. While I had fun gathering opinions from government teachers and student leaders to contextualize the data, polling was a fascinating way to write a news feature.
Creek's lecture hall was packed to the gills, but I found a place in the crowd as 88-year-old Osi Sladek spoke to students and teachers about his experiences fleeing the Nazis. But my job wasn't just to tell his story, but also to explain what he represented to our students. CCHS now has a Jewish club full of concerned students, worried that the Holocaust and its horrible crimes will be forgotten amid today’s re-emerging antisemitism and falsified history. It was important to me to share their concerns, including their hopes that Sladek could discredit the "Holocaust deniers" and dispel the bigots, from our school to around the world. My story was as much about these students as it was about Vladek. This story gave me a challenge of finding perspectives that tell new and less visible narratives. It inspired me to look beyond the obvious story and find new angles and valuable insights.
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