As senior Zollie Kaplan received third place for the Best of Show award for Echowan’s 2015-2016 yearbook, he felt proud representing Park at the award ceremony.

Kaplan said Echowan attended the Minnesota Journalism Convention at the University of Minnesota Oct. 4.

Junior Lillie Albright said a keynote speaker and executive director of Student Press Law Center Frank Lomonte spoke about his involvement in student journalism rights and working toward allowing more freedom in a school journalism setting.

“He talked a lot about how students are treated unfairly in the journalism sense because they are expected to do professional work, but without the protection that real journalists receive,” Albright said.

Kaplan said staffers attended three classes and had their choice to attend whatever class interested them.

“Writers went to the writing class and the designers went to the design class. (The classes) are about thirty five or forty five minutes and they had yearbook professionals running lectures and teaching us their inside tricks,” Kaplan said.

Echowan adviser Julianne Herbert said she suggested her students attend the trip to expand their knowledge on journalism and hear a diverse range of ideas to apply for their own book.

“I think it is really important to see what else is out there beyond the Echowan club and how other yearbooks run their program, hear from experts in the field about their photography, business management, all those kinds of things,” Herbert said.

According to Herbert, judges used a holistic approach when determining the qualifiers for the Best of Show award.

“We won the third Best of Show this year. I think they looked at the yearbooks overall, writing skill, photography and overall journalistic integrity,” Herbert said.

Kaplan said Echowan deserved the award because past staffers worked hard on last year’s yearbook.

“It means a lot to this year’s major staff because we were the ones who actually helped make the book last year with last years major staff. They are not here to receive the award, but we definitely felt really proud when we received it and got called up,” Kaplan said.

According to Albright, the award makes everyone very proud of their work and motivates staffers to continue striving to improve this year’s yearbook to achieve more success next year.

“I think just being in (Echowan) you see all the effort that everyone puts into the book and how everyone goes the extra mile to make it really special. It is not just a matter of getting the work done, (staffers) are really passionate about making a good yearbook,” Albright said.