On May 22, 2025, students of Broadcast Journalism brought home two first-place winners from the BASH Awards, making it one of, if not the, most successful years of Hurricane Watch.
The Broadcasting Alliance for Senior High, better known as BASH, is an award ceremony dedicated to celebrating outstanding work in high school broadcast journalism. Founded in 2017, BASH is part awards ceremony and part learning conference for Long Island and Westchester high school students, teachers, and school administrators involved in high school journalism programs and media production classes.
Attendees toured the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University and participated in breakout rooms to learn from industry professionals on a variety of media topics. Then, Broadcast classes from over 50 schools ranging from Western New York, New York City, Nassau, and Suffolk, met in the John Cranford Adams Playhouse for the awards ceremony.
Before attending her 8th BASH award, longtime Broadcast Journalism teacher Mrs. Mett (period 4) and period 1 Broadcast teacher Mrs. Luciano worked with their students to pick the best packages to submit. According to Mrs Mett, award-winning packages are always “engaging, memorable, and well-researched,” and while these seem like obvious characteristics, creating a package of such caliber is not as easy as it sounds. Submissions are judged on “editing, sound, content, script writing, accuracy, visuals, attention to detail, and overall product.”
Therefore, the Hurricane Watch classes carefully select which packages to submit for the BASH Awards, as schools can only submit to five of the 13 categories. Broadcast students chose to submit to Best Sports, Best School News, Best Human Interest, Best Arts, Entertainment & Culture Feature, and Best Local Multimedia Reporting.
Back at the BASH Awards, after talking with local broadcasting professionals and Hofstra professors about their work in media, students reconvened in the auditorium for the award ceremony. There, Westhampton Beach’s Hurricane Watch was announced as the first place winners in two categories: Best Arts, Entertainment & Culture Feature for the Black History Month feature on the history of Black music, and Newsday’s Best Local Multimedia Reporting for their coverage on the Westhampton Wildfires on Hurricane Watch, Instagram, and whbnews.com.
Luke Albert, a senior in period 4 of Broadcast Journalism worked with Owen Jessop and Charlie Beasley to bring the Black History Month Package to life. The idea was to “make it a trivia-style package because we were looking for a fun way to end Black History Month while touching on something everyone can connect with, which is music.”
To do this, Jessop and Beasley came up with trivia questions, found interviewees and filmed interviews, while Albert worked on putting together a video collage of old photos and footage of historic Black musicians and performers. Albert says “It was really fun to bridge history and the present-day and I definitely learned a lot while creating.”
So when he heard his name being announced at the most prestigious high school journalism awards, the feeling could only be described as “gratifying.” Prior to the ceremony, Albert was doubtful of his chances of winning as the package was “a bit more on the unique side and was pretty different from past winners in that category.”
Although, he truly had no reason to doubt as the package easily secured the win for Westhampton. When reflecting on what the award means to him, Albert said “the package really represents everything I’m passionate about: music and its cultural impact, amplifying marginalized voices, and connecting with those around me… I also had so much creative freedom while editing and was really able to put my twist on it and create something that left 100 percent in line with who I am, so it’s really cool that the BASH committee recognized that.”
Next, Hurricane Watch won another first place award for Best Local Multimedia Reporting, an award sponsored by Newsday. This package consisted of a combination of media from both period 1 and period 4 Hurricane Watch, Instagram, and whbnews.com that covered the wildfires that broke out in early March.
Reese King and classmates Brie Provenzano, Sienna Macdonald, and Meaghan Tufano from period 1 Broadcast worked on the Hurricane Watch segment. The group interviewed Mrs Gordon, a WHB Art teacher and volunteer firefighter for the Westhampton Beach Fire Department who fought the wildfires in Westhampton. As King and her peers went up to the stage to accept their prize, their video played on the big screen for over a thousand people in the audience.
Thinking of the time and effort put into creating this package, King said,“It was definitely a challenging one to put together so I am very proud that it got the recognition it deserves, and the hard work was worth it.”
While Hurricane Watch has won at least two awards at every BASH, this is the first time that Broadcast has taken home two first place honors. The success this year of Broadcast is no surprise to Mett, who said, “One thing that has made them a strong group overall is they work together as a group, not as two separate classes and help each other and raise each other up.”
The class has taught students lifelong skills and even inspired some students to continue careers in Journalism in the future. Next year, Albert will continue his journalism career at Boston University. Taking home first place at BASH meant a lot to Albert, as “creating this package and being honored for it sort of affirmed that this is the path I’m meant to take.”
Concerning Broadcast as a class, King, who will continue her studies at the University of North Carolina said, “I truly learned so many new skills about editing, producing, and creating. I never knew I would end up loving these skills, and I am so grateful I can move onto college and beyond with these useful skills.”
Similarly, Albert agreed, “Getting to explore my creativity and future career field while collaborating and making memories with all different kinds of people this past year has been beyond special. This class has taught me how to be a good and effective collaborator, revealed my strengths (and weaknesses) as a journalist, and has ultimately prepared me to take on journalism both in the college setting at BU and beyond.”
For rising seniors considering taking Broadcast Journalism, Albert’s advice is to just “Do it.” He said, “It’s expanded my social horizons and enriched my high school experience in ways I couldn’t have anticipated and is probably the reason senioritis hasn’t taken me out just yet. I would also say to push yourself to learn new skills, be adaptive and receptive to feedback, and create without restraints.”
To Luke, winning a BASH award is not just about the package he created, but instead reflects “everything I’ve learned this year from Mrs. Mett and my peers and the way Broadcast has made me both a better person and a better journalist.”
Congratulations to all the winners of BASH awards: Reese King, Meaghan Tufano, Sienna MacDonald, Brie Provenzano (Hurricane Watch WHB Wildfires coverage), Dagny Beasley (whbnews.com firefighter “From the Front Lines” report), Lukas Fine, Mia Pazera, Brian Danowski (social media breaking news), and Luke Albert, Owen Jessop, and Charlie Beasley (Black History Month, the history of Black Music).
Broadcast will air the final Hurricane Watch episode of the 2024-2025 school year next Friday, June 13th. Congratulations to all Broadcast students on an incredible year and on two first place honors at the BASH Awards! For more information on the BASH Awards or to watch the award winning packages, visit https://www.broadcastalliance.org/bashawards .
