Shaffer, Gutierrez honored for defending student press rights

Jacklyn Gutierrez, Laura Frank (INews), and Lori Shaffer

Feb. 28, 2012 - The Col­orado Press Asso­ci­a­tion pre­sented seniors Lori Shaf­fer and Jack­lyn Gutier­rez, edi­tors of the Over­land High School “Scout,” with its Ser­vice to the First Award on Feb. 24. They were hon­ored, along with their moth­ers, adviser Laura Sudik, and sev­eral “Scout” staff mem­bers, dur­ing CPA’s annual Capi­tol Hill Lun­cheon, and sev­eral state gov­ern­ment offi­cials, includ­ing Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Joe Gar­cia, were in attendance.

The crowd of over 200 jour­nal­ists and leg­is­la­tors had the chance to hear the story of the strug­gle to pub­lish a sim­ple cause of death in a fea­ture story on an Over­land stu­dent last spring, and how things turned out well when CHSPA, the ACLU and pro­fes­sional media lead­ers com­bined to con­vince Over­land admin­is­tra­tors to change their position.

Jack Kennedy, CHSPA exec­u­tive direc­tor, had nom­i­nated the two young women for the award, and made the pre­sen­ta­tion at the lun­cheon on behalf of CPA. You can read his remarks here.