The Little Hawk was announced as an All Iowa News Team of the Year by the Iowa High School Press Association on Thursday, October 22. This honor recognizes the top five high school news teams in the state based on the overall quality of their publication and website through an individual point system. Little Hawk journalism advisor Jonathan Rogers notes that these awards have to do with last year’s senior editor’s hard work, especially Little Hawk executives Mira Kumar ‘20 and Nina Lavezzo-Stecopoulos ‘20.

While the Little Hawk has received this award each of its four years of existence, this year’s conference was different; it was virtual. 

“The sad thing or the different thing is, we didn’t get to go to the conference this year and not only learn but also celebrate with our own students and the other schools,” Rogers said. “So this felt, like a nice bonding moment for the team to come together and give the award at the conference and also learn about journalism and what’s going on.” 

In addition to receiving the All Iowa News Team award, this Thursday, November 6th, The Little Hawk was placed as a finalist for the NSPA Pacemaker Award. 

Little Hawk exec Jesse Hausknecht-Brown ‘20 reports that she is very proud of her news team for getting this award, noting, “I think it’s super cool that we’ve been able to pull together during such a crazy time.”

“This gives me hope looking into the future to write really good stories and to make the next issues even better than our first,” Hausknecht-Brown said. “ It’s nice when things come our way because as a news team, it good to see these little positive things to get motivated to keep working hard.” 

Jesse Hausknecht-Brown was placed as an NSPA Story of the Year finalist for sports writing. You can read her full story is here. 

“And it’s nice seeing everyone just doing what they can on the newspaper to make it the best it can be,” Hausknecht-Brown said. “And it turned out well.”