Six years ago, Kamehameha Schools Maui’s journalism program was in its infancy and brought home no awards for high school journalism.

Yesterday, the school’s Ka Leo O Na Koa was named the best high school newspaper in the state, thanks to a team of dedicated writers and a drive to innovate.

"I think they’re more excited and unified as a staff," said Kye Haina, adviser for the Maui campus newspaper. "I also have the largest editorial staff I’ve ever had, which is four."

In previous years, most of the staff would be made up of athletes, who needed to take a journalism class to get into the school’s video program. But this year, there were more students interested in the literary arts.

The 42nd annual competition, sponsored by the Hawaii Publishers Association, is meant to encourage the journalistic prowess of high school students, and motivate them as much as sports honors would, said Jay Hartwell, journalism adviser for Ka Leo, the student publication at University of Hawaii at Manoa.

"Through that recognition, we are encouraging them to pursue this in college, and recognize that this is important in their communities and their high schools," Hartwell said.

The competition involved 10 public and 10 private schools. Yesterday’s awards luncheon was held at the Pagoda Hotel.

The luncheon’s keynote speaker, Star-Advertiser education reporter Mary Vorsino, said that although it’s in vogue to say newspapers are dying, she takes solace in the fact more people today are consuming more news than ever. "That said, I’ll be frank, I don’t believe the journalist of tomorrow will look like the journalist of yesterday or even the journalist of today," said Vorsino, also a journalism instructor at Hawaii Pacific University.

"Tomorrow’s journalists will need to get their message out over a variety of platforms —print, online, video — and they’ll need to understand that people want breaking news along with long-form pieces and analysis on issues they care about."

To encourage more media convergence, Hawaii News Now offered $200 to the high school team with the best online video presentation. Only two schools competed, and Mililani High School won.

"The fact is, a lot of stuff that is happening in print is being converged to online," said Mark Platte, Hawaii News Now news director and former editor of the Honolulu Advertiser. "The idea was to provide some incentive so that next year we’ll get more entries."

For Ka Leo O Na Koa news editor Ka‘io Tubera, the award was validation for all the late hours her team worked on the quarterly, full-color newspaper.

Tubera’s team also won the award for best single issue. The February issue focused on new laws in effect for Maui County. The school paper also just launched its website and Twitter account.

"We’ve been coming out with new stories almost every day," said the 18-year-old senior. "The staff is really well-rounded, there are people from all over the school, and it’s really great that we built such a strong team this year."