This year, The Pearl Post staff overcame challenges and breaking news with dedication and rigor. We are endlessly proud of our team’s amazing work ethic and dedication to journalism. 

During the school year, there were many instances of sudden, urgent news that required immediate coverage, from wild fires to two separate walkouts. Despite many of our staff being new, they were up to the challenge and worked tirelessly to do their part as reporters and ensure news coverage was being done in a timely and accurate manner. We also commend how resourceful they were: during the LA fires in January, reporters organized digital interviews with students. 

Although one of our goals was to use Slack, a professional messaging platform, more actively we do not believe that we fully realized our goal. Communication was a struggle, with many messages being ignored. We hope in the coming year that communication improves. 

That said, our other goals were wonderfully met. Not only did we meet the accomplishments of last year’s staff, we surpassed them. This year, almost all of our staff received at least one Best of SNO. We also placed highly in the NSPA Clips & Clicks competition. We swept during competitions, large and small. 

We also attended both the fall and spring JEA-NSPA National High School Journalism Conventions. During the former, we submitted our second-ever special issue, focused entirely on the 2024 elections. We placed third in nationals for Best of Show for small schools in newsmagazine and placed tenth in Best of Show for small schools in news website at the spring convention. 

Best of all, we were finalists for an Online Pacemaker award for our news website. This was a great source of pride for us and we remain deeply grateful that we had such an opportunity. 

Besides all the awards, we were able to tell stories that mattered from our community to a national level. These stories consisted of first time voters, immigration policies and more.

Although this year is almost over, our work is not. We spent the last few weeks of school working tirelessly to complete our fifth magazine of the year. During this time, many staff writers  are acclimating to using Adobe products as they prepare for their roles as editors in the coming year. 

We are deeply grateful for such an amazing staff and year. We are deeply excited to see what next year will bring.