As one of my first ever stories, this article holds a special place in my heart. I co-wrote it with a friend, but I handled much of the actual writing here. This is a pretty basic story, but it was the first story I write that wasn't about a club. Those club stories are important, of course,  but they don't quite have the bite of something like this, which made this story the biggest one I'd wrote at the time. 

I'm proud of the reporting here, particularly because I was able to find someone who was impacted by this in a unique way, having even fewer options because of their dietary restriction. This story isn't my best writing, but that's to be expected for one of my first ever stories, so I'm proud of the quality of the writing when taken in the context of when I wrote it.

This story was in our December 2021 print issue here, and online here.

This story is about one of our district's most controversial school board decisions in recent memory: requiring all extracurricular music students to enroll in some form of a curricular music class.

There were a lot of perspectives on this: students in favor, students against, teachers for, board members for an against. There even was a bit of a debate over the role of the school board here: do they exist to make decisions, or to make sure district officials went through a good process when making a decision?  In order to include all of these perspectives, I had to gather information from a lot of different sources: I interviewed a teacher who was on the planning committee, several students against the decision, and included several quotes from the board meeting from board members, district administrators and students. This story balances all of these perspectives well, while also explaining the changes and the school board's debate well. I believe this is easily one of my best pieces of writing and reporting.

This story won the Illinois Journalism Education Association's Division 4 award for Best In-Depth News Story in 2023. It appeared in our January 2023 print issue here, and online here.

When our editorial board looked ahead to our school board elections, we knew we had to cover them in some way. Ultimately, me and one of my colleagues decided to do both Q&A's and bios on each of the candidates, in order to ensure our community was informed about the candidates beliefs and backgrounds.

I handled the challengers, while my colleague handled the incumbents. I am proud of this series primarily because I believe I asked questions that were truly relevant to our community and that would help voters figure out which way to go. These questions centered around the two big school board decisions of that school year: removing our Latin program, and the changes to our music program described in the previous entry. Perhaps most importantly, these questions weren't asked by any of the professional news outlets in our town. My perspective as a D203 student allowed me to bring something unique to my coverage of a big community event that may even have had an impact on how people vote. For that reason, I am proud of these stories.

Our full series on the inductees can be found at the links on this page.

When I first heard students complaining about their SAT scores being delayed, I immediately could sense a story. I talked to anyone I heard complaining, recording their frustration with the delay and giving them an outlet. I then sent a reporter to interview the proctor of the test to see what happened from their perspective.

All in all, I think this story came out as one of my more compassionate pieces of journalism. It clearly explains the what and why, as any good article should, but it also takes the time to explore how the impacts students feel, and how the administrators who many students blamed for the issue felt as well. This piece does a lot to humanize both sides of the issue, and for that reason more than any other I am proud of this story.

This story appeared in our September 2023 print issue here, and online here.

This story ties back to one of my news entries, about our district's changes to our school music program. I wanted to revisit the decision a year later, to see what it actually looked like when implemented.

In this exploration, I talked to students across all three of our music programs (band, orchestra and choir) and found their thoughts on the class to be wildly different. In this story I was able to capture the wide array of experiences in these classes and opinions on them in a well written and easy to understand fashion that I am deeply proud of. 

This story appeared in our December 2023 print edition here, and online here.

I remember the day I got the idea from this story vividly, because I was just so confused by the data I was looking at.  The odd pattern in SAT scores explored in the piece confused me deeply, especially after I calculated the percent change from year to year. I took the sheet with my calculations to just about everyone I could find: our principal at a press conference, one of our assistant principals, a math teacher, our math department chair and even an assistant principal from another school district, all in an effort to figure out what was going on. I racked up about two hours of interviews during that process, which I turned into this piece.

I believe this was my best piece of reporting to date: instead of merely telling a story, I explored an issue, bringing in sources as collaborators and working to come to a conclusion with them. The ultimate product of this is a story which I believe eloquently and accurately describes this issue and what it means for students.

This story was names "Best of SNO," and can be found in our January 2024 print issue here or online here.

Among my sports portfolio, this story was far and away the most difficult to report.  The actual sports elements of the game were pretty simple: a highly-ranked and highly-skilled team was upset by one of the lowest seeds in the sectional, ending the high school careers of several NCAA Division I commits. Beneath the surface though, it was a little more complicated: two of their best players were suspended for smoking cigars at their graduation a week prior, and another broke his hand after punching someone in the face. I spent several days working to get any source to go on the record to confirm either the suspensions or the injuries, but was only able to get the names of those who were ineligible to play. I believe that despite not being able to confirm exactly why the players were out, the story does a good job explaining the emotional and logistical impacts of the losses and their role in the teams loss.

Find the online-only story here.

I love a good game-recap, and I had the pleasure to write one for several of our football team's games this year. While the reporting here may not be as in-depth as some of my other sports work, I believe that writing a good game story takes skill: you must be able to identify the big moments of the game, describe them in a clear and concise fashion, ask coaches and players about them in the two minutes of media availability they have after the game, and understand the greater impact of the game on a team's season. In both of the following stories, I believe I did all of those well in both of these stories, and told two solid stories.

Story 1: Online

Story 2: Online and in print

I am proud of this story, because I think it is everything that can go right with sports writing: it’s goes deeper than just saying “yeah, we want to be better,” and it is anything but a puff piece. It’s a smaller story, but the examination of how and (most importantly) why this team has struggled provides true insight. Not only that, but I think my knowledge of this sport is very clear in the story, which is something that makes any sports story better- especially when sport-specific details are included without alienating casual fans, as I believe I did well here. 

Read the story online and in print.

This column of mine is by far my favorite, mostly because I find the topic extremely relevant. Not only does the column discuss one of the biggest sports news stories of that month in college conference realignment, but it connects it back to a big event in our own school's sports world as well: a football-only athletic conference merger.

I believe the actual body of the story is engaging and well-argued as well, providing ample context on the PAC-12's collapse and making a compelling argument as to why the conference realignment is bad for athletes.

Read the column online here and in print here.