Sara's Favorite Article of the 2024-2025 School Year

by Sara Rosenthal, SSLI '27

Editor’s Note: PPN continues a tradition of winding down our year of reporting by celebrating each editor’s favorite post. We invite you to follow the link to the celebrated article.

My favorite article of this year was "Students Attend ADL 'Never is Now' Conference" by Jordan Bitton.

Jordan Bitton: Today's Celebrated Writer! (S. Rosenthal)

In this article from early March, Jordan wrote about our high school's attendance at the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) "Never is Now" conference and, as with most Paw Print Now articles, he included students' experiences and thoughts. But Jordan also went above that standard in regards to quotes and interviews, including specific quotes from the presenters at the conference in order to share more of the experience with readers.

After introducing the conference and the organization, Jordan shared the words of one of the speakers on a panel of college students who are very involved in their universities' Zionist and Jewish communities. He included a piece of panelist Barri Seitz's advice for Jewish teens who will soon be going to college—to stay true to our Judaism. Later in the article, Jordan directly cites a selection from a speech made by Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of ADL, in which he shared his message of the necessity of being proud to be Zionist.

Of course, like most Paw Print Now writers do, Jordan went on to include interviews from multiple high school students who attended the conference and even added commentary from guidance counselor Mark Kowalsky. But in first quoting the speakers at the conference themselves, Jordan effectively brought the conference directly to readers. Instead of gleaning bits and pieces of it through students' experiences, he displayed an elevated level of news reporting by recording the speakers themselves and bringing that directly to our readers.

Jordan is a consistent and reliable writer for Paw Print Now and always writes thoughtful and interesting articles. He most frequently writes "Sports Recap" articles, highlighting the wins, losses, and improvements of all our Schechter teams. Jordan, I hope you keep writing next year. You do great work!

Sara Rosenthal is an editor for Paw Print Now and has been published on the site since January 2024. Sara is currently a sophomore at the Schechter School of Long Island and can be reached at the following email address: srosenthal27@schechterli.org.