1st Place, News Brief
2021-22, Division 4, News Writing
By Jamie Phillips
Uncaged
Stockbridge HS
On September 28th at Olivet high school, Stockbridge Special Projects Lab, formerly known as InvenTeam, launched a high-altitude balloon 91,000 feet into the atmosphere. This balloon was equipped with high-quality cameras to take pictures of the Earth’s curvature and sensors to collect data such as temperature and air pressure.
“The goal was to potentially capture images of the Earth’s curvature with not
only the cameras that the balloon kit came with but also our QB satellite that Jack Hammerberg configured,” junior Jason Gruber said.
The cubes that were launched were five inches by five inches, which are small and lightweight. This standardized way of making satellites makes them cheaper to launch because they’re much smaller and lighter than conventional satellites.
“It was a lot of fun. I mean, at the age of 16 being able to capture pictures of the earth is kind of a big deal,” Gruber said. “I haven’t heard of anybody else doing it.”
NW-04. News Brief
News briefs should be 150-200 word stories that report on events and issues that have news value and timeliness to the publication’s readers. Coverage should include quotes or other attributed information from at least one human source. Submit a PDF of the print page(s) on which the news brief was published or the URL to the story on an online news site.
JUDGING CRITERIA
- Meets word count limit
- Does not sacrifice accuracy for the sake of timeliness
- Sharp, attention-getting lead that underscores news story importance
- Uses inverted pyramid
- Sentences are carefully constructed to be as concise as possible
- Emphasizes news elements, i.e. timeliness, nearness, impact, and prominence
- Uses direct quotes or attributed information from at least one source