Junior places fourth in national student television competition

Photos and reporting by Suproteem Sarkar, Convergence Editor

Editor’s note: To listen in on Lowry’s interview, mouse over the images in this interactive report and click on the white dots. Smartphone and tablet users, tap the image then tap the white dots.

Junior Zach Lowry’s package featuring student musicians placed fourth in the Student Television Network’s Spring Nationals under the lifestyle reporting category. Photos: Suproteem Sarkar/The SPOKE

Junior Zach Lowry’s package featuring student musicians placed fourth in the Student Television Network’s Spring Nationals under the lifestyle reporting category.

Lowry said he chose to report on student musicians because he wanted to “take a closer look” into how students produced music at a professional level at Conestoga. Lowry said he produced the package after taking part in the KYW Newsradio Newstudies program, a six-week course that teaches high school juniors and seniors about journalism.

“During the winter and … early spring, I was participating in the KYW Newstudies program in Philadelphia,” Lowry said. “It’s basically a program that teaches you about the journalism industry and what it really takes to make it in either broadcast, print [or] online, and the culmination of the program is that each student has to create their own story based on something that is happening in their community or at home, and so my focus was student musicians.”

Lowry chose to feature three musicians with varying levels of experience.

Lowry said that before producing the package, he researched the genres of music produced by Conestoga students. He said that he tried to incorporate musicians with many levels of experience into the report, ultimately choosing senior Jake Neumar and juniors Safi Aziz and Jenny Liu.

Lowry said that filming, editing and reporting the package required careful planning, and he worked on it both in and out of school.

Lowry worked on the package both in and out of school.

“Along the way I was writing lots of notes down in my notebook,” Lowry said. “Eventually I wrote the voiceover, which is basically the script for the report. I planned out where I wanted to put each interview [and] what type of music I wanted to put in the background and then I edited it all at my computer at home and brought it into Good Morning Stoga and played it on the announcements.”

Lowry’s voiceover also aired on KYW Newsradio in early March in a 30 second segment.

Lowry said that learning that he had placed fourth was significant for him since not many Conestoga students have won awards from the Student Television Network.

Lowry joins a select group of Conestoga students that have been recognized by the Student Television Network.

Schools from “California and the Midwest [are] usually the ones that win,” Lowry said. “So that’s why it was really cool and sort of exhilarating to even get fourth place because Conestoga rarely gets recognized from the Student Television Network.” Lowry said

Lowry said he has gained experience with journalism after producing the package, and is thrilled that he placed fourth in a national competition.

“I’m glad to be recognized for the work that I did but the real credit has to go to the musicians because without their drive and without their passion, I would have never been able to accomplish this,” Lowry said.

Lowry said that he is also grateful for the Conestoga journalism program’s role in his success at the competition.

“I got into the TV studio program freshman year and I was just so taken in by the amount of equipment that we have at Conestoga and the opportunities that we really have,” Lowry said. “The stuff that I’ve made and the reel that I’ve accumulated through high school—I would have never had the chance to do any of that without the help from the TV studio teachers and my journalism teacher, Ms. Houseman. I’m really thankful for the commitment that the TV studio and the teachers there have given me. They’ve given me opportunities that I could have never even imagined.”

Suproteem Sarkar can be reached at ssarkar@stoganews.com.