Cone Wins at State Journalism
By Addisyn Ludden
Abigail Cone did what she does best, used her hard work and creativeness to earn a sixth place finish at the NSAA state journalism contest.
Pierce High Journalism sent one qualifier to the Lifelong Learning Center at Northeast Community College for state journalism. Cone, a junior, participated in the NSAA State Journalism Contest and placed in the News Feature Writing category.
Cone’s event started at 11:30, and she had 75 minutes to write a story. She was given a two-page sheet of basic guidelines for the assignment, along with a couple sentence overview of the topic. She was also given four quotes from different perspectives.
“We could not switch tabs, and we had to start with a blank document and we got an hour and fifteen minutes to write,” Cone says.
“It was pretty cool to be able to have gone down to state. It was a big goal of mine at the beginning of the year to make it to state in an event, so it was rewarding to see that get accomplished,” Cone exclaims. “It was a little overwhelming at first because there were so many people everywhere, but once I got into the room I competed in, things slowed down. I started writing at 11:30 and our time was up at 12:45. I took around an hour to finish. Once Mrs. B was done proctoring in another room, we went and grabbed some lunch and then came back for the awards ceremony at 2:45,” Cone said.
“Abbie showed that she can stay calm under pressure, writing and editing a news story in under 75 minutes. I’m so proud of her for qualifying and medaling at state. Competing in Class B is pretty tough, as some of the larger schools like Gretna, Gretna East, Elkhorn, Hastings, and Pius shows that she truly had to earn her medal,” Crys Bauermeister, journalism teacher, said.
“It was a unique experience, and it was fun to do something different. I was very happy I didn't get last. It was really cool to see all the different schools represented at state and was impressive to see their level of passion and commitment to journalism. It's definitely something I want to do next year also. I think this year taught me a lot about what it takes to be able to compete in Class B, and next year I want to try and get in some more categories. Overall, it was a great experience and a really fun day,” Cone expresses.
