Herald-Zeitung wins NIE award for comics contest

NEW BRAUNFELS — The Herald-Zeitung recently won first place for Best Newspaper In Education/Literacy Idea in the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation’s Literacy & NIE Contest.

The Herald-Zeitung was considering updating some of its comics and decided to let NIE teachers and students vote on which comics they would like to see in the paper.

Jeff Fowler, circulation/NIE director, said “Ballots were distributed, votes were counted, and the people (students) spoke. It was a great introduction to the democratic process and created quite a buzz as students felt like they were having an impact on what went into their community newspaper.”

Fowler said, “Our goal was simply to get the students interested in reading the paper and to create a unique forum for discussion of the democratic process in the classroom.”

Results were printed in the paper, along with some demographic breakdowns and interviews with students and teachers. The project was a huge success, and the students’ choices became mainstays in the new comic layout.

“When results were published and the new strips hit the paper, a few curmudgeons in the community were disgruntled that we had allowed children to have a voice,” Fowler said, “but there is some controversy in any election. At any rate, it got people talking, and the overall response was very positive.”

No funding was involved. The paper printed the flyers and ballots in house, then inserted them into the NIE papers. The ballots were collected and counted by Fowler, who also broke out the demographics. A reporter went out to several “polling locations” and got voters’ reactions.

Contest judges said: “This entry actively got children involved in their newspaper. In selecting the best comics, children read, discussed and made judgments. In addition, they learned about the voting process. This was a fun way to get local kids to interact with the newspaper and feel empowered by that interaction.”

Got an NIE success story to share? Send it to the Messenger at paulineword@texaspress.com.