DP News Awarded among the best in the Nation
to Student Journalism
Student-Run News Program Winning Several Awards
Completing Dos Pueblos High School
First, the First-Place Conclusion Ever
By Ryan Cruz | April 2, 2023
Every year since Dos Pueblos High School students began participating in the news program DP News Student Television Network competition — a national competition and award show that is the high school equivalent of the Emmys or the Oscars — students came with high hopes, but mostly left empty-handed. In 16 years in the competition, Dos Pueblos has taken home three awards.
John Dent, who started the running program in 2004, recalls the familiar feeling of each spring, where, although the trust team had put in some serious work for the competition, they had to help hard-working students endure yet another. let down
“Every day I sit in my room and I think, ‘That place is going to be good this year,'” said Deut. “And every year I get confused.”
This year, Dent and Doug Caines — who was hired as a principal instructor at DP News five years ago — took 34 students on a five-day trip to Long Beach, where more than a dozen kids participated in the party. – A place of competition in reporting, video editing, and filmmaking, testing their skills against more than 2,700 student journalists.
After a week’s tour of the team and long hours spent in the hotel suite editing submissions, the crowd was gathering for the awards ceremony, where Dos Pueblos had yet to hear their name called at the halfway point.
“I thought, I’m going to have another one of those years where I’m going to have to deal with broken hearts,” Dent said.
But then the fortunes of DP News changed. The group’s video about the dangers of phone addiction, “Disconnect Reconnect,” created by Alex Gardiner and Seth Phillips, earned fourth place honorable mention for public service announcement.
The team was “ecstatic,” Dent said, but when they first sat down, they found themselves winning four of the last five awards, two third-place wins, one second-place finish and one place in the Games Highlight.
In total, DP News took home five awards in the competition, along with its daily news publication ranking among the top 20 in the nation, and The Goodland Podcast named as “the second best high school podcast in the country.”
“It’s been awesome to have feedback for our students,” said Caines, who described the Crazy 8 competition, in which students have eight hours to write, listen, send, and review video submissions — as “hyper intensive” and dependent on collaboration. with each college.
DP News took third place in the Crazy 8 Documentary Competition with “Talk Actions,” a short film that explored the environmental impacts of plastics using interviews with local businesses, scientists and other experts in the field.
Caines said it was a “real collaboration” for students to come out and capture the stories and conversations in the state they don’t know and break down at the end of the day.
“I always say, life is a big group project,” Caines said. “You can’t make a life out of yourself.”
Both Caines and Dent said the success of the students is led by a core group of seniors Gabriel Casselman, Logan Surber, and Alison Togami, who play a role in the day-to-day program transmissions and leading the way with the team’s competition. Long Beach
Togami, Dent said, is a key figure in the program, as a senior producer who has more experience in these events than some of his classmates. “Without his leadership, we would not have done well.”
“This year was amazing,” said Casselman, who also serves as executive producer of the daily show. He said his favorite moments of the trip to Long Beach were the moments in between, where he could get to know his classmates, or during the celebration, when the whole group celebrated their wins.
“It was electric,” said Seth Tedeschi, who partnered with sophomore Jude Kadi to take first place in the Mendo Games Highlight. “I didn’t expect us to win, and everyone stood up and started cheering. It’s so cool – it’s surreal.”
Junior Aidan Myers took second place in the “Reported News Review” competition, which involved telling a compelling story using raw interviews and video clips. He credits success to “Mr. Cain, who teaches that every story has a good beginning, middle, and end.”
The trio of Jules Steelsmith, Sophia Merritt, and Sophia Pixley took third place with a 90-second social media video directed vertically, which the group said is growing in popularity among teenagers who look to their phones for news.
Students competed in more than 15 competitions at the convention, including art entries featuring storyboards, commercials, music videos, personal vlogs, and movie trailers.
“Producing high-quality content like DP News provides is tough in any environment, especially in a classroom,” said Santa Barbara Unified School District Superintendent Hilda Maldonado, “but these students do it every day. We are proud of the quality of work they do to keep DP students informed and let them see to know the work”.
You can watch the daily editions of DP News on-line.
