Jones College Prep’s Blueprint student newspaper won the Scholastic Press Association of Chicago’s Sweepstakes Award, the highest honor for a scholastic newspaper in the Chicagoland area, on Friday, March 22, 2019.
The Blueprint won the top prize for the second time in only four years of competing. Lane Tech had won the award for 19 consecutive years prior to Jones’ first time winning the best paper in 2017. When Lane narrowly defeated Jones in 2018 for the award, then-incoming Editor-in-Chief Jack Bedore ’19 and editors of the Blueprint began their laser-focused goal of winning the back the plaque, and they succeeded.
Four individual write-off competitions were held on-site on at the annual workshops, and Jones won two of them with Eryn Barnes ’19 winning the opinion category and Carter Frye ’19 winning the sports category.
Out of the published entries into the contest (anything published from March 2018-February 2019), winners are:
Superior opinion piece / column: Susana Chenmei ’18 “Senior feels stigma surrounding CTE”
Superior general feature story: Ellie Lawrence ’18 “A library success story”
Superior computer graphics: Deklin Versace ’18 “by the numbers: senior sendoff”
Superior sports photo: Jake Aks ’19 “basketball layup”
Superior sports story: Jack Brooks ’19 Joe Margolis ’19 “Jersey Shorkin”
Superior entertainment review: Max Kroll ’19 “Thank u, Netflix”
Superior original drawing / comic: Abby Teodori ’19 “mayoral race”
Superior staff editorial: Blueprint “Accepting acceptance: college admissions posts face backlash”
Superior special coverage: Blueprint staff “Gun Control Walkout Edition”
Excellent humorous piece: Jake Aks ’19 “I don’t want AirPods anyway…”
Excellent sports news story: Carter Frye ’19 “Eagles keep flying high”
Excellent original editorial cartoon: Abby Teodori ’19 “graduation requirements”
Excellent non-sports photo: Sam Wojcik ’19 “pool kayaking”
Excellent community story: Katherine Williams ‘20 “After initial relief, concerns over Van Dyke verdict”
Excellent personality profile: Ava Thompson ’21 “Movin’ on up”
Excellent overall layout: Blueprint
Excellent overall newspaper: Blueprint