1st Place, News Brief
2024-25, Division 2, News Writing
By Gabe Nix
Update
H. H. Dow HS
The International Baccalaureate Program will be implementing changes to assessments, starting in November that will adjust exam start times, require a minimum supervision period, and implement a new calculator role.
All students taking IB assessments will experience these changes, which were made to minimize the potential for cheating and ensure all IB assessments are fair. In order for exams to be considered valid, these changes will have to be made at all schools that are providing IB assessments.
“Really cheating happens when a student on the East Coast would email questions to someone on the West Coast,” DHS IB Coordinator Sarah Pancost said. “It’ll feel slightly inconvenient for the students who have to stay longer. It will be a small number of exams affected, with language exams being most impacted.”
For all exams, a minimum of two hour supervision period will be mandatory, and, to reduce the chance of time zone related cheating, certain schools, depending on their location, will adjust exam start times. Additionally, all calculators must have their memory cleared prior to the exam.
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