Niles West News Site Brings Home National Honors

More and more people are getting their news online these days, and students at Niles West High School are no different.

Niles West News, the student news site, went live last fall, replacing the school’s printed newspaper. First-time faculty advisor Evelyn Lauer had an entirely new staff, including editor-in-chief Rozy Kanjee.

Last month the group took home one of nine Online Pacemaker awards in their class given by the National Scholastic Press Association’s National High School Journalism Convention in Anaheim, Calif. They also won the “Best in Show” award for the Publication Website Large School category.

Lauer, who worked on her high school newspaper, said she was aware of the Pacemaker Awards, sometimes called the Pulitzers of high school journalism. When she became the advisor to the Niles West News last summer and received approval to move from a printed paper to a website, she told Prinicpal Kaine Osburn that she hoped to win one for the school in three years.

“I’m so proud of these kids, I could cry,” said Lauer.

So is Kanjee, who said she almost wishes she wasn’t graduating so she could see how the site develops next year.

“This is very, very humbling,” she said.

While there was some opposition to ending print publication, Lauer said, it is important for students to prepare to enter the world in which they live, not the world of decades past.

“To pretend people aren’t getting their news online is doing the students a disservice,” she said.

Student journalists update Niles West News site (www.nileswestnews.org) every day, uploading anywhere from one to five new stories. The interactive site allows students and teachers and other readers to comment.

“There are very few schools who are doing what we are doing,” she said.

With its mix of timely news and features, it has become a daily online stop not only for students, but also for teachers and administrators, said District 219 Superintendent Nanciann Gatta.

“I look at it almost every day,” she said. “If you want to know what’s going on at West, that’s where you look.”

If all goes according to plan, Lauer plans to spend time this summer helping Niles North develop its own online news site.