The Columbia Scholastic Press Association rated the Southerner and thesoutherneronline.com a hybrid “Gold Medalist” publication in its annual critique on Oct. 28. The critique rated the Southerner’s work from the 2018-2019 school year. The Southerner scored 955 of a total 1,000 points in the rating, with scores in the 95 percentile or higher in the three areas rated, Essentials, Verbal and Visual. 

The judge’s overall comments began, “Your work is impressive and it was fun to explore. Your team does well at leveraging the strengths of your website and print editions to provide your community with a valuable service. Your efforts to include multimedia add value to your copy. You seem well-balanced in each area and we’re seeing a lot of progress over the past couple years.”