Valley Teens Honored for Journalistic Excellence

Winners of The Times’ Valley Edition High School Journalism Awards were honored Tuesday at the edition’s headquarters.

The students were among hundreds of teenage journalists from the San Fernando Valley area who entered the Times’ competition this year.

The competition also included awards of overall excellence for student publications in two categories--those of four pages and under, and those of more than four pages.

Taking the four pages or under category was John Burroughs High School’s The Smoke Signal. The Burbank school’s newspaper was characterized by the judges as “a comprehensive and smart mix of features, opinion and news.”

Winning in the larger publication category was Harvard-Westlake High School’s The Chronicle. The judges called the Studio City school’s paper an “outstanding publication--comprehensive, well organized and not afraid to take on serious issues.”

Individual winners were announced in the following categories:

* News: Shonu Gandhi of Harvard-Westlake won for an article about the effects of students’ self-segregation.

* Sports: Tim Orland of Harvard-Westlake won for a story about the challenges high school students face in helping to coach junior high and youth teams.

* Editorial: Josh Sohn of Harvard-Westlake won for an editorial about the advantages of having slanted instead of straight spaces in the school parking lot.

* Features: Shalin Mantri of the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks won for a story about young people investing in the stock market.

* Photography: Jeremy Baum of Canoga Park High won for a picture of Mayor Richard Riordan and Councilwoman Laura Chick at the grand opening of the Madrid Theater in Canoga Park.

* Illustration: Marcia Gay, also of Canoga Park High, took the Cartoon/Illustration award for depicting the effects of Proposition BB construction on students.

* Review: Michael Tseng of John Burroughs High won in the Arts and Entertainment Review category for a witty column about grammatical mistakes found on the Internet.