By FULLER ROYAL
Staff Writer

The staff members of Whiteville High School’s High Times are ecstatic.

The nearly 50-year-old news-paper won its second consecutive first place honors from American Scholastic Press Association.

Not since the 1970s has the WHS newspaper been so hon-ored in a national setting.

The American Scholastic Press Association has more than 2,000 high schools and colleges on its roster.

High Times advisor Marsha Burney, in her second year at WHS, said the newspaper scored 945 points of a possible 1,000 points.

“That’s a 75 point increase since last year,” she said.

“All of my hard work has paid off,” said editor Brian Taylor, who spends 10 or more hours each week working on the paper.

Burney said Taylor took last year’s point sheets, kept what worked and improved the lower scoring areas of the paper.

Content coverage was the biggest improvement, Burney said.

One of the improvements Taylor initiated was including local, state, national and world news briefs.

For some students, those news briefs are their only source of news outside of Whiteville.

Taylor said he is proud of what his staff did.

“I worked on the newspaper my freshman year and I liked it,” he said. “I liked it more than yearbook and I wanted to be the editor.”

“It’s been stressful, but fun,” he said. “The biggest part of stress comes from late ads and stories.”

Taylor, a 17-year-old senior, plans to pursue journalism as a career.

Assistant Editor Hillary Kindschuh, a 16-year-old sophomore, said she loved being on staff this year. It was her first year.

“Journalism is something I’m interested in doing in college,” she said. “It’s nice finding out something about everyone in school and I like the environment.”

Kindschuh has been tapped by Burney as next year’s editor, marking one of the few times that Burney has ever had an 11th grade editor.

Her sister Mary Kindschuh, has been the sports editor this year.

“It’s been really fun,” said Kindschuh, an 18-year-old sen-ior. “I like the atmosphere. I like being able to write what I really want.” She hopes to work on the newspaper staff of whichever college she attends in the fall.

“I feel really good about this win,” she said. “I have had my own page and to have that do well has been good.”

Ray Cheek, a 16-year-old sophomore, sold ads and worked as a writer this year.

“I enjoyed working with the club news,” he said. “The hardest part of this is when I get writer’s block. It’s easy for me to start a story but it really slows down once I get into it.”
He plans to continue with the newspaper his junior and senior years.

Senior Devin Gore, 17, has worked as the advertising manager this year.

“It’s a tough job,” she said. “I had to make sure the money was turned in, lay out ads and come up with a lot of ideas. I had to create things off the top of my head and make the ads look decent instead of just plan or ordinary.”

She has more than 100 advertising clients. The newspaper annually publishes eight issues with 12-16 pages each,

Self-sustaining, the paper costs $500 to $1,000 per edition to print.

“I never thought this would happen,” Burney said. “Not two years in a row and not with the program so new.”

She said her students had come up with a lot of new ideas that worked well for them.

High Times is the only high school paper in Columbus County printed on newsprint and with color pages.