A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter will be on campus Wednesday, April 20 to help kick off a local version of the prestigious journalism competition for Wisconsin high school students.

Raquel Rutledge, who won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, will be the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Northeastern Wisconsin Scholastic Press Association (NEWSPA).

With funding from the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative, NEWSPA is sponsoring a yearlong journalism competition open to high school students from across the state. Rutledge has agreed to serve as a judge for the competition, which will include cash prizes for the winning students. The Campfires Initiative is a joint venture of the Pulitzer Prizes Board and the Federation of State Humanities Council in celebration of the 2016 centennial of the Prizes.

Students and their advisers will be assisted in their reporting by a 50-page curriculum guide, “Journalism in the Pulitzer Tradition,” that was developed by two members of the UW Oshkosh Department of Journalism. Copies of the curriculum guide will be available at the conference.

The high school journalism contest will help mark the centennial of the Pulitzer Prizes and is part of Celebrating Excellence: One Hundred Years of Wisconsin Pulitzer Prize Winners, a program of the Wisconsin Humanities Council.

“Celebrating Excellence will highlight the achievements of Wisconsin’s Pulitzer winners in ways that inspire Wisconsinites with the power of superbly crafted fiction and journalism that informs, enlightens and connects us to one another,” said Dena Wortzel, executive director of the WHC.

“We are thrilled to be involved with the WHC initiative, which will allow us to create exciting opportunities for newspaper advisers around the state to gain a deeper understanding of how to reach the skills and spirits of tomorrow’s journalists,” said Trent Scott ’03 MA, the president of NEWSPA as well as the chair of the English Department at Oshkosh West High School and adviser to the Index, the school’s newspaper.

“Now more than ever our students need to understand the power of the written word, be it print or online,” Scott said. “This partnership accentuates and extends our ability to provide valuable resources and collaboration opportunities to our peers in student media.”

NEWSPA, which is housed in the UW Oshkosh Journalism Department, sponsors an annual conference and contests as well as provides other resources for high school journalism students and advisers. UWO journalism instructor Barb Benish ’83 and MBA ’92, serves as NEWSPA’s executive secretary.

NEWSPA’s Pulitzer curriculum guide is designed to inspire student journalism by showcasing examples of prize-winning work in categories such as feature writing, beat reporting, commentary and public service journalism. The guide includes suggestions for classroom discussion and tips for how students could complete reporting projects on similar topics in their schools or communities.

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