Education

High school journalism award winners honored

Times Review Media Group honored five student journalists representing each high school in the coverage area with scholarships at a ceremony Thursday night.

This year’s winners were: Brynn O’Connor of Riverhead, Caroline Morgan of Shoreham-Wading River, Madison Storm of Mattituck, Anakin Mignone of Southold and John Wright of Greenport. All the winners are seniors.

Brynn began focusing on journalism in her junior year, when she took an elective in journalism. She wrote op-eds, researched prominent journalists and developed an interest in the field. She recently submitted an essay on the stigma against modern journalism for a New York Times contest. She plans to attend Emerson College where she hopes to continue exploring journalism.

Caroline was editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper this past year and she said she fell in love with it. She wrote articles and helped organize and lay out the paper. She said she enjoyed the creative freedom of writing, even in “hard news” stories. She plans to pursue journalism as a career and will attend SUNY/Stony Brook. She said she was most proud of story she wrote about the Notre Dame Cathedral fire in Paris. The story struck her on a personal level because she had visited the site and she said she enjoyed learning about its history.

Madison worked on her school newspaper as well, The Mattitalk. She said she found a love for documenting events and writing about them in detail. She said one of her favorite pieces of journalism was writing about her attendance at the Women’s March in January 2017. She said she enjoyed sharing her perspective on the political climate. She’s passionate about sustainability and protecting the environment and those are areas she hopes to pursue in journalism. She’ll attend the University of Vermont in the fall to study English and journalism.

Anakin spent the past two years working for SOHO TV and was an executive producer. He was also a graphic editor for The Sentinel, the school newspaper. He helped lead SOHO TV’s exclusive coverage of showing the house where Louise Pietrewicz, the Cutchogue woman who had been missing for a half-century, was found buried. He also helped lead live election coverage. He plans to attend CUNY/Brooklyn College to study film production and theater.

John will be attending Clemson University on an Army ROTC scholarship and majoring in computer science. After college, he will become an officer in the United States Army. In journalism he said he loved voicing his opinions by writing freely about his interests. He was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Quill. He described it as an incredible experience to write with other students who also share a love of writing. He particularly was proud of an article he wrote highlighting the heroin epidemic on Long Island.

Photo caption: (from left) Southold winner Anakin Mignone, Riverhead winner Brynn O’Connor and Greenport winner John Wright. (Credit: Joe Werkmeister)