Extra,extra,read all about it!

PUKEATUA teacher Mel Sutton and student Holly Kirkham hold the Pukeatua Star-Times, while the rest of the editorial team - Samantha McMahon, Michaella Hanham, Annalise Bowman, Kendal Rea, Shaquille Newton, Nathan Tauroa - celebrate their win. Behind them is Mt Maungatautari, the landmark which provided plenty of inspiration for their paper. 304061AD

By Cathy Asplin

If you don’t believe reporters have to work hard for their breaks, just ask the editorial team of the Pukeatua Star-Times.

When you live in a tiny rural area you don’t get many opportunities for a big news story. So the pupils staked out the nearby entrance to the Maungatautari Ecological Island, taking photos of all cars arriving in the hopes they would get a snap of special guest, Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Their perseverance paid off - in fact Ms Clark spotted the enthusiastic team and decided to pay their school an impromptu visit.

The resulting photo and article gave the school newspaper an ideal front page story for their entry in the ‘Make A Newspaper 2006’ competition.

Obviously the judges were also pretty impressed by the dedication shown by the team as they were named one of five winners in the primary school section - collecting $5000 at a prizegiving staged at the Auckland Zoo.

Over 90 schools registered to enter the competition run by the New Zealand Herald, with around 60 producing the goods by deadline. Pukeatua entered three newspapers from the one Year 5/6 class.

Each newspaper was required to have 10 sections (including healthy food, money, literature, community and sports) so plenty of creativity was required by the pupils at Pukeatua.

Class teacher Mel Sutton says ideas for leads were given to the pupils by organisers - but these didn’t always relate to a tiny school in a rural area.

“There were suggestions like visiting our local bakery for the food section - but Pukeatua doesn’t have any shops so we had to come up with creative ways to make use of what we have got.”

That meant visits to places such as Out in the Styx Cafe across the road and Mt Maungatautari. It also meant finding out the special things about Pukeatua - such as the largest rhododendron in the Southern Hemisphere, how wildlife is being protected in the Maungatautari Ecological Island and the wonderful people who call Pukeatua home.

During their interviews they found out plenty about their school and their community - from pupils’ experiences of yesteryear to rising sports stars of today. The rest came from their imagination - a news item about escaped horses that got the highest score in a school maths test, some rocket powered shoes to help with the long walk home from the bus stop, a possible school uniform, a new currency featuring local icons and a report on the day the Silver Ferns’ car broke down outside the school.

Miss Sutton says technology played a large part in the newspaper making process. But that also created a few problems.

“We only had the use of one camera, one scanner and one printer - so we had to be organised. Even so, at one stage we thought we might only get one newspaper finished by the deadline.”

Fortunately the newspapers all made it, with the Pukeatua Star-Times taking out top honours.

Their cash prize is going to be spent on a digital camera, digital video, music making programme and computer that is set up for multimedia use. So watch out for the next edition of the Pukeatua Star-Times!