The Tyrone Eagle Eye News recently earned national recognition from School Newspapers Online, the site that hosts the Eagle Eye News website.

The Eagle Eye News was one only seven online school newspapers to receive their Distinguished Site Award, and the only school to receive the award in Pennsylvania.  School Newspapers Online hosts over 1300 school news sites nationwide.

“I’m proud of my classmates for working so hard to get us this award,” said Marijo Walen, senior.

The Eagle Eye was also on the front page of the Altoona Mirror on Thursday, May 22 for receiving this award.

To qualify for the Distinguished Site Award, the Eagle Eye had to earn badges in six different areas: continuous coverage, site excellence, story page excellence, excellence in writing, multimedia and engagement:

• To earn the Continuous Coverage Badge the staff must post new stories on a regular basis and cover breaking stories quickly.
• The Site Excellence Badge is awarded to schools that customize the look of their website and use good design.
• The Story Page Excellence Badge is awarded to sites that incorporate elements such as pictures, pull quotes, or videos into their stories.
• The Excellence in Writing Badge goes to sites that had at least three stories posted on the Best of SNO website. The qualifications to have a site there are: topic, quality, length, opinions, something special, and stand out.
• To earn the Multimedia Badge, the staff had to produce news videos using different camera angles, steady footage, panning, and zooming.
• The Engagement Badge is earned by having a combined total of 1000 followers from two different staff social media accounts and at least 5,000 page views and 1000 unique visitors in a one month period.

The Multimedia Badge was one of the most difficult badges for the Eagle Eye staff to earn. To receive this award, the Eagle Eye had to greatly improve its videos and slideshows.

One of the most difficult aspects of this award was finding appropriate video content.

“There’s a lot of stuff to cover in the school,” said Nathan Hormel, freshman, “but it’s not all great for video.”

It was also difficult for the Eagle Eye to earn the Engagement Badge because as a new online news site,  the Eagle Eye just started in social media this year so earning 1,000 followers was a challenge.

However, the staff put together several contests and advertising campaigns to get the number of followers it needed.  Currently, the Eagle Eye has just past the 1,100 like mark on Facebook and the 250 follower mark on Twitter.

The Excellence in Writing Badge was also a challenge because of the high standards of the Best of SNO website.

“We probably submitted ten stories for every one that was accepted,” said Todd Cammarata, the Eagle Eye faculty adviser.

Eventually, it was a story on Mr. Salamy by Carly Crofcheck, a story on Jordyn Swogger’s 1,000 point game by Olivia Bietz and a  review of the new South Park video game by Micheal Eyer that earned the Excellence in Writing Badge for the staff.

“I’m very proud of what we have been able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time,” said Cammarata, “if you would have told me at the beginning of the school year that the Eagle Eye was going to win a national award, I would have laughed.”

Tom Hutchinson, the co-founder of SNO sent the school a letter praising the Eagle Eye.

“I am confident that you are aware of the outstanding work these students produce daily for their website,” wrote Hutchinson.