An article on binge drinking scored high school journalist Kathryn Krakoff accolades from the American Scholastic Press Association, along with a first-place national award for the entire staff of The Ravine.

A newsmagazine written by Worthington Kilbourne High School students, The Ravine was one of eight high school newspapers in Ohio to receive first-place honors in the annual competition among high school newspapers.

Journalism teacher and adviser Rich Littell said Krakoff was one of seven high school reporters honored from across the country with an "outstanding award" for non-school-oriented feature articles.

"The story Kathryn won the outstanding award for was about binge drinking and whether lowering the drinking age would address the issue," he said. "The article related the issue to its impact on students in general and our kids in particular. It's a relevant topic because so many kids in our community are involved in alcohol use."

Littell said the award was the result of hard work by the entire student staff.

"I'm really proud of the staff as a whole and of Kathryn in particular, but the first-place award is the product of everybody on the staff because each person contributed to each of the 13 issues we produced this past year," he said. "We also try to publish as much work as we can from beginning journalism students, so they get a taste of having their work published in a real paper. Those guys also have a piece of the success of the entire staff."

Littell said students elect to work on The Ravine after completing a journalism course at the high school.

"In some situations, we waive the class for students who are excellent writers and are motivated by pursuing journalism as a career," he said.

Krakoff, a 2010 graduate, also was a member of the Sentinel yearbook staff and a varsity cheerleader. She will attend Bowling Green State University in the fall and is considering majoring "in diverse areas, including nursing, design and journalism," Littell said.

The American Scholastic first-place award evaluation includes judging of the quality of writing and reporting, design, photography, artwork and news coverage, he said.

Maeve Beyer, Taylor Rinehart and Collin Remick served as editors last school year.

"Our goals as a staff start with serving our readers by providing them with local, school and national news, information and opinions," Littell said. "Because of the lag time from deadline to distribution, we don't cover breaking school news.

"We stress covering articles that will interest our students, often localizing national issues to get our school community's opinions on important issues that impact teens," he said.

Littell said he stresses the importance of ethics and balance in gathering news.

"It's not a senior publication or a cheerleader publication or a band publication," he said. "The Ravine belongs to everybody and we owe our readers quality writing and design and we owe them integrity in coverage."

Goals for the coming school year include an online news page.

"We already offer The Ravine in full color on our web page, but we hope the online page will help us to publish more timely work and to help prepare the students for careers in journalism, since much of it is heading online," he said.

Littell also teaches English at the high school.

"I see the publications and the news staff as being the place where the practical use of everything we teach in the English program comes alive," he said. "Is there a real-life counterpart of writing a character sketch of Romeo or Juliet? Not much, but the application of news writing carries way beyond the classroom into career opportunities or later life."

" 'The Ravine' belongs to

everybody and we owe our

readers quality writing and

design and we owe them

integrity in coverage."

--Rich Littell