Excellent young journalists: digital school newspaper wins another prize

Created: 12/23/2021, 2:09 PM

At the award ceremony: (from left) Vivian Groß, supervisor Hannes Bräu, Tomas Mühlbauer, Minister of State Judith Gerlach, Magdalena Pavel, Stefanie von Winning (Institute for Civic Education), Vreni Gilg and Markus Ferber (Chairman of the Hanns Seidel Foundation).

Blog team is well connected © Privat

Someone has to imitate them first: A group of young journalists from the Murnau secondary school has won another award.

Murnau

- The up-and-coming journalists at the Murnau secondary school in the Blauen Land have once again done a great job: After their online school newspaper “Blog im Blauen Land” has already been twice in the journalism competition in recent years, it has now won the third award : a special prize of 300 euros in the online category.

The award with the title “Die Raute” was given last Monday to the Murnau participants and sixteen other school newspapers from all over Germany.

The Hanns Seidel Foundation, which is close to the CSU and based in Munich, has been offering the award since 2010.

Among other things, journalistic contributions, creativity and a variety of information are evaluated.

The jury particularly praised the multimedia content of the Murnau format.

The foundation's website says: "The blog provides insights into school and pupil life and also deals with current topics such as Corona".

goal achieved

This public appreciation makes teacher Hannes Bräu and his team of eleven overjoyed. The educator is pleased that the student blog was able to convince with a "great overall impression including all media". The editors of the digital newspaper have thus achieved their goal: "We want to appeal to all the senses through audio-visual content," explains Bräu. The teacher from Garmisch-Partenkirchen leads the elective "Crossmedia" which he founded himself. In this course, the formerly analog school newspaper 2017 was converted into a blog (www.blogimblauenland.de). The mentoring teacher is proud that the platform has developed so successfully in a relatively short period of time.

When he drove to the award ceremony in Munich with four young editors earlier this week, there was great excitement. “A face-to-face event like this is both a reward and motivation for the students,” says Bräu. Judith Gerlach (CSU), State Minister for Digital in Bavaria, was also there.

When it comes to media literacy, it is not easy to fool the junior high school students into something: The team around the blog in the Blue Land is well connected and has thus defied the pandemic.

When all other electives were canceled, the cross-media members held their editorial meetings online.

Some of the interviews were even recorded digitally.

“That earned us a lot of respect - both in the journalists' competition and now with the diamond,” reports Bräu.

The aim of the elective course is to publish two contributions per week.

Around 400 blog entries

According to the Garmisch-Partenkirchener, this plan is mostly adhered to. The blog now has around 400 posts - including 18 audio files (podcasts). The variety of topics includes aspects of everyday school life, video games and world events. The editors from the seventh to tenth grades are committed to daily news. You work largely independently and get support from Bräu, who worked as a freelance journalist for the Garmisch-Partenkirchner / Murnauer Tagblatt for ten years. The 34-year-old pays particular attention to the podcasts: “We have a lot to offer in terms of audio technology. The production is very complex, especially the editing. ”All of this depends on the commitment of the students.You are constantly producing new content and have high-quality technology available for this - including interactive whiteboards and a professional microphone. Bräu intends to invest the prize money in film equipment. “In the future, we want to put video contributions online based on the example of the podcast,” the supervisor announced.

He and his protégés look forward to the New Year full of anticipation: In March they will be able to take part in a workshop organized by the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Academy of the Bavarian Press.

The focus is on video journalism.

If the participants skillfully apply the knowledge they have learned, they may win many more prizes.

Constanze Wilz

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