Any fan of Mount Carmel for the past four years knows who Matt Malloy is, likely hearing his voice on home sports broadcasts and podcasts, yet he is also an accomplished journalist in the making.
Last year Malloy joined The Caravan, MC’s student newspaper and has transitioned into being an editor this year while continuing to contribute articles. He has drawn thousands of page views and the attention of Scholastic Press Association of Chicago.
On March 14th Malloy was honored at SPAC’s annual conference at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism with awards for “Superior Achievement” in the category of Opinion Piece or Column, and “Excellent Achievement” in the categories of General Feature Story, Sports Feature Story, and Sports News Story based on submission of select pieces he has written for The Caravan over the past calendar year. Most notably, though, Malloy was named SPAC’s Chicago High School Journalist of the Year, which also includes a $1,500 one-time scholarship to be used for his college education.
“I submitted six articles, and I won five awards,” said Malloy. “So four of those six articles I won an award for and then the fifth award I won was journalist of the year.”
Mr. Tim Baffoe, who teaches the 21st-Century Media course in which the school newspaper is produced, gave The Caravan staff a chart with SPAC’s award categories, and those students were able to select pieces they had written for those categories if they wished. Malloy went category by category and chose what he felt was the best piece that he had written per each category.
He and his Caravan peers were not even aware that the Journalist of the Year award existed and were surprised when it came up in overheard conversations at the conference. Adult moderators of their respective student newspapers submit nominees for that award, and Mr. Baffoe did not mention this to Malloy prior.
“[Katie Fernandez, Senior Program Coordinator for Teach for Chicago Journalism and organizer of the SPAC conference] started talking about it when we were there, and I immediately was like, oh, like I wonder who’s going to win this,” said Malloy. “I started looking around the room, and I’m like, well, it’ll probably be somebody from one of these bigger schools, like Marist or Lane Tech, just because of how big their publications actually are. I was definitely shocked.”
The previous awards handed out during the ceremony had all gone to students or adults from Walter Payton College Prep for designing the conference’s logo, student and teacher fellowships from SPAC’s sponsor, the McCormick Foundation, and principal of the year. Many just expected that a Payton student would take the Journalist of the Year award as well.
“They started talking and they said, ‘This is the most prestigious award a student can win today,’” said Malloy. “The thoughts that started running through my head were, oh, I wonder who from Walter Payton is going to win this.”
It was a great experience for Malloy personally along with the notability The Caravan gets for having the Journalist of the Year, especially when it was the first time MC was represented at SPAC during any member’s time on staff, including Mr. Baffoe.
“When I nominated Matt,” Mr. Baffoe explained, “I told SPAC that he has become like a second teacher in the classroom when he’s working with his classmates on editing their articles. I’ve leaned on Matt to help improve his classmates’ writing and coordinating the publication overall while also never having to worry about him submitting quality work of his own.”
The Caravan staff knows that Malloy has been crucial to the newspaper and were ecstatic for him as his name was repeatedly announced for recognition, especially the Journalist of the Year.
“I’ve never really won an individual award like that,” said Malloy. “So going up there, taking my picture and getting the plaque and everything and then sitting back down with you guys, it was obviously a very cool experience.”
This is not the first time Malloy has been recognized for his writing, though.
“My mom and dad and my sister were getting ready to go somewhere, and they were pretty much out the door when I told them hold on let me let me show you guys something,” said Malloy. “I took out the award and the plaque and they said congratulations and all that, but something else my mom said was ‘Don’t you remember when you were in third grade and you wrote that you wrote that story’ and that was definitely a flashback for me.”
When he was younger he was quite the writer and even received recognition from his grammar school, St. John Fisher in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood.
“What she’s talking about is in third grade, during one of my English classes, we had a creative writing period,” said Malloy. “So I think we got probably 45 minutes, maybe half an hour, and there was a prompt. I think the prompt was right about a challenge that you’ve overcome and, I wrote this story of the first time I ever went on a roller coaster. When we were done writing, my teacher said, ‘Would anybody like to share with the class what that wrote?’ And I was like, I’ll volunteer. So I stood up in front of the whole class and I read my story about going on the ride, and my teacher was so impressed with what I had written that she called in the vice principal and she said, ‘You know, you guys have got to hear this.’”
Malloy will be attending Nebraska and continuing his writing while he is there.
“I think my thought process with college is to get involved a lot and I am going to try to write as much as I can,” said Malloy. “I’m going to try and interview as much as I can and announce as much as I can. I just want the full experience. So with the full experience, obviously writing for a publication comes along with that. So I am very excited to see what’s in store in Nebraska.”
What’s certain for now is that Malloy is a very accomplished journalist and has brought prestigious recognition to The Caravan.
