1st Place, News Brief
2024-25, Division 4, News Writing
By Ryan Zhu
The Crane-Clarion
Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School
Students returning from spring break discovered a set of black double doors outside of Kingswood’s art studios. The installation was a part of the Security and Safety department’s ongoing effort to install swipe access on all major doors.
The historic nature of the original door prevented the modification for embedding the digital lock, and the solution was a second entrance. However, the installation has found critics among the student body.
“The new door slows down traffic in and out of the building a lot and it becomes an issue during passing time,” sophomore Andrew Liu said.
Students said that the slowdown was partially caused by a reportedly less-effective swipe pad, compared to previous installations.
“I need to take my ID out of my sling bag to scan because the pad doesn’t pick up the signal,” sophomore Jay Lee said. “And that isn’t the case for all of the other doors around campus.”
Yet, Lee recognizes that the door is here to stay and is willing to compromise looks for safety.
“The location and the placement of the door don’t make a lot of sense to me and the door itself is quite ugly,” he said. “But if it’s here for security reasons, I suppose I can understand that.”
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