The Pearl Post newsmagazine and website staff are finalists in five categories in the 65th Los Angeles Press Club SoCal Journalism Awards, which will be given on June 25 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

The Pearl Post is a finalist in five categories, including for Best High School Newspaper and Best High School Website in the annual Los Angeles Press Club SoCal Journalism Awards. This is the second time The Pearl Post has had this many finalists.

“I am the one who usually checks our awards for NSPA and LA Press Club, so I was the first to know and I was like ‘LA Press Club Finalists are in,’” Print Editor-in-Chief Delilah Brumer said as she recounted hearing about the finalists announcement. “I yelled it and then I read them off and everyone was clapping and it was really nice.”

In addition to the publication categories, several of the student media editors were also named finalists. Brumer is a finalist in Best Student News Photo, Managing Editor Rikka Dimalanta and Digital Media Editor Jenica Felicitas are finalists in Best Student News Writing and Art Director Gabrielle Lashley is also a finalist in Best Student News Writing.

“It’s just cool to see that other people recognize my hard work,” Lashley said. “I think it’s cool that my writing was able to be finalist worthy. Honestly, it feels like a nice way to end my high school career, to end off with something like this. So, I hope I win something because it would be awesome for one final award before I graduate. I think that would just be kind of like an honor before I graduate.”

Dimalanta and Felicitas co-wrote The Pearl Post’s story “Deadly fentanyl crisis plagues teenagers, concerning students and school district,” which discusses the distribution of naloxone in Los Angeles Unified School District campuses in response to the fentanyl crisis. 

The Pearl Post has won the LA Press Club awards for Best High School Newspaper and Best High School News Website numerous times since 2012 when the LA Press Club added awards for high school publications. Being a finalist this year is awarding to the editors, who worked with a smaller staff than previous years and had many new staff to produce the yearbook, bimonthly newsmagazine and news website.

“I was really proud as a junior editor because it’s been a long year and we’ve all learned a lot from this experience and with the group that we’ve started with,” Online Editor-in-Chief Alan Ruiz said. “I’m so proud of everybody with the growth that we’ve all experienced from where we were at the beginning of the year to where we are now at the end of the year.”