High School newspaper journalists compete in write-off at UCSB

Journalists from 10 local High School newspapers competed in a write off at University of California, Santa Barbara on Tuesday morning.

Some of the students listened to professional feature writer Melissa Baffa from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, while others listened to Editorial writer and cartoonist Peter Brown from the City of Ventura and and others listened to multimedia journalist Tracy Lehr of KEYT,KCOY, and KKFX.

Afterwards they had an an hour and twenty minutes to produce their work.

Mark Storer is the director of the Tri-counties Journalism Education Association.

This year students from 10 high schools newspapers in Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties competed.

They included students from Adolfo Camarillo High School’s Stinger, Buena High School’s Buena Speaks, Channel Islands High School’s Isle Files, Foothill Technology’s Dragon Press, Newbury Park High’s Panther Prowler, Nipomo High’s Titan, Nordhoff High’s Ranger, Ojai Valley School’s On the Hill, Pacifica High’s Currents and Paso Robles High’s Crimson.

“This is like our final exam for journalism kids for the year, ” said Storer.

UCSB students helped judge the write-off.

The winning journalists took home trophies.