The Fluvanna County High School Journalism team recently received an International Second Place award for 2014-2015 from Quill and Scroll, an international honor society for high school journalists. The award was for The Fluco Beat, the school’s student-run new site, and it places the site among the top 50 student newsites worldwide, according to Quill and Scroll.

Under the direction of Journalism Adviser Elizabeth Pellicane, last year’s editorial staff included Editor and 2015 graduate Cassie Hobbs, and Assistant Editors Patrick Dieter and Shjon Best. The students designed and maintained the site, wrote articles, took photos, and helped oversee and edit the work of dozens of student reporters. Best was unable to continue working on the Journalism team this year, but really enjoyed his time in the class. “I loved the work atmosphere. It wasn’t nearly as stressful as other classrooms, because the rules weren’t strict — they were reasonable. Given a task, I had access to all the tools and people I needed to complete it, and it helped me learn to organize and time manage,” said Best. Dieter, who is this year’s Fluco Beat Editor, is continuing the tradition. “I like to write a lot of articles,” he said, noting that job also includes copy editing, posting articles, and managing the site.

Even though every FCHS Journalism student writes at least one article a semester, the editors are the ones who decide how to organize the stories on the site. “ I enjoyed working on the Movie section most, but I also enjoyed being able to edit the look of the site… Rearranging the articles to change the way they appeared on the Showcase was always amusing,“ said Best.

Pellicane (who teaches Journalism, Mass Media, and Creative Writing) serves as the site’s Publisher. She plays a big part in the journalism team. She helps Dieter decide on the layout, assign stories, edit stories, and post them. She also motivates the students to work together as a team to get the job done.

“We’ve been publishing The Fluco Beat for years but it was originally a magazine and then a newspaper. It just became too expensive to print, plus news sites are the wave of the future, so in the beginning of 2013 school year, we switched to an online news platform,” said Pellicane. “Publishing on the web has had so many benefits for us. It’s significantly cheaper and we can update or add articles whenever we want. I have amazing students who do fantastic work and I’m so proud of what they’ve been able to accomplish,” she said.

This may have been the first year the Fluco Journalism team has submitted their news site for judging, but clearly, it won’t be the last.

Update 10/15/2015: Fluvanna Journalism team wins a second award. The Fluco Beat won first place in VHSL’s Student News Site contest.