BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer
EDISON — It has the look, the substance and the panache.
That’s why the J.P. Stevens High School yearbook, “The Regalis”, won the Garden State Scholastic Press Association (GSSPA) All-New Jersey award for the second year in a row, said Susan Dougherty, GSSPA secretary.
The distinction is the organization’s highest honor in its annual yearbook contest.
The GSSPA is a statewide organization that helps journalism advisors and teenagers who are publishing newsletters, school papers and yearbooks. The organization has been in existence for about 20 years.
It is the second year for the All-New Jersey award and J.P. Stevens stood out both years.
“J.P Stevens’ yearbook has a wonderful design with its contemporary look,” Dougherty said. “It is also filled with excellent copy. This school’s book far surpasses most that I have judged in several states across the country.”
The J.P. Stevens’ yearbook, is so substantial that it could double as a history book, she said.
“In this yearbook, the students who wrote got to the meat of each and every story,” she said. “Their grasp of the human interest component was clearly what made the stories really come to life.”
J.P. Stevens’ yearbook advisor Candy Zupko was behind the winning effort.
Ironically, Zupko is in her 10th and last year in the position.
What she has managed to capture to make yearbook publications outstanding are, specifically, “great quotes, which show how hard the students worked to report, and wonderful leads,” Dougherty said.
And Zupko was proud about all that had been accomplished by her yearbook staff.
However, she said she was “most proud of the fact that this staff does our yearbook entirely after school, without a yearbook class.”
The number of students involved in yearbook production has grown rapidly since Zupko took over as yearbook advisor 10 years ago.
“When I first started this 10 years ago, I had 50 kids working with me in the beginning, and at the end of the year I would end up with two,” she said. “Now I have a staff of 25, which stays through the entire year.”
Students who apply to be on the yearbook staff are screened for their ability to write copy, headlines and photo captions.
“The newspaper used to get the best writers, Zupko said. “Now the yearbook does. The students want to be a part of something good. Getting awards like the one from GSSPA reaffirms the fact that they are doing something worthwhile.”
The award was presented last month at GSSPA’s Press Day, an event held on the Rutgers University Busch Campus that hosted 800 teenage journalists from around the state.