Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: McHenry High School Entry Title: The McHenry Messenger Entry Credit: Michalina Sotka, Ffion Curtain Judge Comment: Clean header with social icons, search bar, and organized navigation menu. Thoughtful homepage layout. Consistent layout on landing pages/sections. Story pages have SEO with tagging and internal/external links and a nice right rail (sidebar). Photos are optimized with captions and credit/source info. Consider updating the multimedia content section. It looks like you have current videos that just aren’t being added to the section. Nice staff page. Consider adding a footer with your about, contact, and policy pages. Responsive mobile design. Passed core web vitals. Well done, McHenry!
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Edwardsville High School Entry Title: Edwardsville High School Tiger Times Online Entry Credit: Atticus Ball, Isabelle Robinson Judge Comment: Nice header and footer with organized navigation bar and sticky header. Homepage has defined sections with a good list of stories for each. Story articles need more SEO elements, such as internal/external linking and tagging. Photos are optimized, but some need captions along with the source/credit. It would be nice to see more multimedia elements like video/audio. Responsive mobile design. Good page load scores on both desktop and mobile. Great work, Edwardsville!
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Prospect High School Entry Title: ProspectorNow.com Entry Credit: Noah Jahn Judge Comment: Nice header with social media icons, date, search and article ticker. Nice organized navigation with Interactive drop down content. Site pop-up needs to be set to only activate once per day or session as it can be intrusive for the viewer. Story article layout is good. Good use of quotes, internal/external links, and tagging. Make sure you implement photo optimization practices. This will help with page load speed. Nice footer. Some styles aren’t showing on staff page follow links. It may be nice to see a multimedia landing page to view recent video & audio, then link out to your youtube & spotify pages. There’s a lot of content and interactive elements. Responsive mobile design. Work on core web vitals and page load speed. Well done!
Place Name: Honorable Mention Contestant Name: Palatine High School Entry Title: PHS Cutlass Entry Credit: Karim Melek Judge Comment: Clean header with organized navigation and social media links. Announcement ticker is nice. Sports ticker breaks up content well. Article pages have tags, internal/external links, inline photos, and optimized photos with proper captions with credit/source. Nice right rail newsletter signup and translate module. Nice to see updated multimedia videos & podcasts. Responsive mobile design. Site passed core web vitals. Nice work, Palatine!
Place Name: Honorable Mention Contestant Name: Naperville Central High School Entry Title: Central Times Entry Credit: Central Times Staff Judge Comment: Nice top sticky header with date, socials, and search bar. Homepage layout is nice with announcements ticker to solicit reader-generated content. Article layout is good with the right rail (sidebar). To improve SEO, add some internal/external links, tagging, and optimize photos for web. Consider updated multimedia content and add some interactive elements to engage viewers. Responsive mobile design. Site passed core web vitals on mobile so work on passing desktop. Good job, Central Times
