The Saratoga Falcon received a Silver Crown by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) on March 19 for the 2008-09 school newspaper. Winners were announced at the 86th annual Scholastic Spring Convention at Columbia University.

Thanks to last year’s staffs who were led by editors-in-chief Michael Chen and Dorey Schranz, The Falcon was one of 41 high school newspaper publications awarded a Silver Crown out of the total 1,558 school publications reviewed by the CSPA. Publications were judged on “writing/editing, design, content, concept, photography, art and graphics.” A total of 44 Gold Crowns were presented this year, 13 of which were to high school newspapers and 11 to online news sites.

“Putting out the paper is never just about the competitions and awards, it is about offering a campus service while learning a lot about writing, production and journalism, but at the same time it feels great to be recognized as one of the best high school newspapers in the country,” said Schranz, now a freshman at UC Berkeley.

Last year’s staff was open to “try new things and make the paper new and exciting visually, something which I really think paid off,” said Schranz.

Over the past 10 years, The Falcon has won six Crown awards.

Though the recent Silver Crown was a drop from the previous year’s Gold Crowns in both the print and online newspaper categories, the years to come are still open for improvement.

“As for the future, I’m not sure what students will want to do. I know I’d like to fine-tune some of the processes for creating the paper and really examine different sections and make sure we’re presenting information in a way that interests and informs readers,” said journalism adviser Mike Tyler.

For more information on the 2010 Crown Awards, visit: http://cspa.columbia.edu/docs/contests-and-critiques/crown-awards/recipients/2010-scholastic-crown.html.