2025 grant winners

By Daniel Axelrod

The Florida Society for Professional Journalism Chapter is celebrating its 2025 High School Newsroom Grant program recipients, adding to a tradition of support student journalists.

SPJ Florida’s high school journalism grant program has helped nearly 30 high schools fund equipment purchases, printing and broadcasting upgrades, training, travel for coverage, educational opportunities, editor stipends, and other newsroom and yearbook office essentials.

SPJ Florida’s 2025 grants and recipients included:

  • $500 for Wellington High School in Palm Beach County, which supported the YouTube and Instagram channels used by its WDEN affiliate with new equipment. WDEN is only two years old, and the school produces content with very little equipment. The SPJ Florida grant paid for microphones, tripods, and lighting to improve the quality of content at WDEN.
  • $300 for Parrish Community High School, which branched into podcasting and other video recording to enhance its reporting and news delivery.
  • $200 for Lakewood Ranch High in Manatee County, which upgraded its podcasting equipment, with critical supplementary dollars, given that the school has a “no ads policy.”
  • $500 for Cape Coral High School in Lee County, which used the local SPJ funding to help with the production of print and online newspaper editions.
  • $500 for Coral Gables High School in Miami-Dade County, which supports its first-year publication staff’s attendance at the Student Television Network (STN) conference.

SPJ Florida grants typically total $500 per program, and the chapter—one of the Society of Professional Journalists’ biggest and most active—has awarded more than $13,000 to schools since 2018. Many high school programs fill gaps in local news by covering stories that other outlets miss.

Part of the SPJ Florida High School Newsroom Grant program’s success has come from helping so many new schools each year—a goal the program continues to achieve. The grant applicant class for 2025’s diversity was no exception, with roughly two dozen schools applying. High school journalists and student media advisors alike apply for the grants by submitting short essays explaining how the funds would benefit their newsrooms and yearbook offices.

SPJ Florida’s judges include a distinguished group of current and former journalists who’ve taught and advised student media at the high school and college levels and served as high school and college news editors across platforms. They consider a variety of factors, including a scholastic newsroom’s need, a tangible plan for how the funds will be used, and how the newsroom’s merits, achievements and ambitions deserve a grant. At Coral Gables High School, for example, the broadcast program had been abandoned years ago due to a lack of an advisor, leaving Gables without one for almost a decade.

“Now, our students are working tirelessly to revive this legacy,” Natalie Abrahantes, Coral Gables High School’s journalism teacher and broadcast advisor, said. SPJ Florida’s grant was “crucial in helping them build on the skills they’ve worked so hard to develop.”

At Parrish Community High School in Northwestern Manatee County, SPJ Florida’s grant “helped make our [journalism] program competitive,” said language arts teacher Courtney Lancaster. Plus, the grant dollars allowed the school to “better promote the program while simultaneously allowing us to report on the incredible events taking place on our campus.”