One student journalist from Wenatchee High School faced a tough challenge last year: reporting on a delicate subject, slogging through police reports and meeting resistance from a variety of sources. He diligently followed the story throughout the school year, delivering updates throughout the hearings and trials.

2015 graduate and Online Editor for The Apple Leaf, Bryce Newberry, had one of his stories, “Bus trip assault chaos caught on video” nominated for the NSPA (National Scholastic Press Association) news Story of the Year. His story is one of eight nominated for the news category. Newberry had already won Washington state’s Lu Flannery Scholarship for outstanding journalism last spring.

In 2012, WHS graduate and former managing features editor of The Apple Leaf, Holly Thorpe, won the national Story of the Year award for her work on the WHS swimming pool drowning.

The Apple Leaf was also nominated for the third time in a row for the NSPA Pacemaker in the tabloid division this year. The winners for all of the categories will be announced at the national convention at Orlando on Nov. 12-15.

Newberry said working on the bus assault story was intense.

“[The rape case] was an entire school year of reporting and following up on things. [“Bus trip assault chaos caught on video”] was probably the combination of about two weeks of work and waiting for records to come in,” Newberry said.

Not only was acquiring reliable information time consuming and difficult, but discussing and writing about such a topic in a school newspaper presented challenges as well.

“It was such a tough story for the school and the community, so obviously it was a tough story for any reporter to have to cover and talk to people about,” Newberry said. “There were a lot of challenges. People were reluctant to talk about it in the first place, secondly it was a school … paper and that topic wasn’t necessarily in the best interest of the school district.”