(Copyright 2002. The Bristol Press. All rights reserved.)

April 8, 2002

Tattoo journalists win national honors

By Jackie Majerus

BRISTOL -- Two teen journalists for The Tattoo won top honors from the national Quill and Scroll contest for high school students.

Mike Nguyen and Katie Jordan , both students at Bristol Eastern High School , won Gold Key awards from the National Newspaper Association Foundation and the Quill and Scroll Society.

The two awards for The Tattoo made up half the number awarded to all Connecticut high school students in the contest. The other two winners attended Joseph Foran High School in Milford and Bunnel High School in Stratford .

Nguyen, a junior, won in the sports story category for a June 14 profile he wrote on stunt bike rider Jamie Bestwick, who competed in the X Trials at Lake Compounce last summer.

"He was cool," said Nguyen. He said he couldn’t understand Bestwick’s accent at first.

Nguyen’s story was one of 55 sports stories honored with a Gold Key. There were 459 entries in that category.

Jordan, a freshman, won in the editorial cartoon category for a cartoon called "Officer Stan’s reinforcements," a whimsical play on words about a police officer who called for reinforcement but instead of getting back up got a sheet of office paper reinforcements.

"I hate those things," said Jordan, who said she drew the cartoon after shopping for school supplies. "They come off and then they stick to everything they’re not supposed to."

Jordan ’s was one of 30 winning cartoons nationwide out of 274 entries.

Both students worked on today’s edition of The Tattoo , which appears on page A-9.

Along with other Tattoo staff, both Jordan and Nguyen recently won first place medals for their work on The Tattoo at the Scholastic Press Forum in Springfield , Mass.

Jordan, who has also won awards for her newswriting, likes to draw cartoons, she said.

"It doesn’t involve as much work as writing," she said. "It’s more of a hobby than anything els. It’s just something fun that I like to do."

Nguyen -- who has interviewed U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, school officials and star athetes -- said covering the X Trials was the best thing he’s done since he joined The Tattoo as a freshman.

During the X Trials, Nguyen took a ride in a blimp and wrote about it in addition to chasing after skateboarders, trick bikers and in-line skaters during the competition.

Nguyen said he much prefers writing about the excitement of the X Trials and the blimp ride to interviewing the school principal about the accreditation process.

Since 1997, writers and cartoonists for The Tattoo have won 29 Gold Keys in the annual contest.

Nguyen’s story, "Watch out for ‘crazy English biker,’" and Jordan ’s cartoon, "Officer Stan’s reinforcements" can be seen on The Tattoo ’s website: www.ReadTheTattoo.com.

To see the winning entries, click below: