THE Reason, Ermysted’s student newspaper, has achieved national success for the third year in succession at the Shine School Media Awards 2021.

The Skipton school student newspaper was ‘highly commended’ in the following categories: Best Newspaper, Best Newspaper Front Page and Best Sustainable Initiative Leading to a Greener Future.

Each year the Shine School Media Awards, sponsored by the likes of Google, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) and The Times Educational Supplement, is hosted at the Stationers Guild in London. However, due to current Covid-19 restrictions the ceremony in London was cancelled and a pre-recorded ceremony was published to announce the results.

The popular student newspaper, which is published on professional newsprint, is run by an editorial team of sixth formers with writers coming from all year groups. Due to restrictions in schools on extra-curricular activities and year group mixing, the entirety of The Reason’s production this year was conducted remotely via Microsoft Teams: a challenging, but impressive feat for senior editors Alex Miles and Theo Toth.

Alex and Theo ran several virtual workshops with section editors to help them with the editorial process and gave regular iterative feedback on numerous drafts throughout the process.

Since the inception of the newspaper nearly two and a half years ago, The Reason has achieved considerable national success, either winning or being highly commended for 16 national awards.

Though The Reason did not achieve the same levels of success in 2021 as at the 2019 and 2020 awards, the feat is particularly impressive given the awards are dominated by independent schools who have considerable time and resources to devote to student publications.

Editor Alex Miles, Year 13, said “Despite this year’s restrictions, The Reason’s team has worked tirelessly to ensure our continued success with the Shine awards. Working with the editorial team was a great fun and provided experience that will be valuable in my future career, from the communication skills and leadership I developed to quality assurance.”

Teacher George Barrett, who assists with The Reason, added: “This has been such a disrupted and challenging year for our students in so many ways and so the achievements of Alex, Theo and the rest of the team are even more impressive against the uncertain backdrop of their education and lives. The Reason continues to grow in popularity at Ermysted’s and this is all down to the talent, dedication and hard work of our outstanding editorial team and writers.”