Matt Malloy is a natural with the pen and at the keyboard.
The Mount Carmel senior recently won the Scholastic Press Association of Chicago’s High School Journalist of the Year Award as well as four other writing awards.
He was recognized in March at SPAC’s annual conference at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, winning awards for “Superior Achievement” in the category of Opinion Piece or Column and for “Excellent Achievement” in General Feature Story, Sports Feature Story and Sports News Story. All of his award-winning efforts were based on submissions he wrote for The Caravan, the online newspaper produced by Mount Carmel students.
“My favorite thing about the kind of writing and editing I’ve had to do in order to win the Journalist of the Year award is that it’s all been centered around Mount Carmel,” he said. “I love my high school. It’s where my family has gone in the past, where my cousins, friends and I go now, and will probably be where a lot of future Malloys go. To be able to cover stories and events at a place that is very important to me is something I have never taken for granted. It’s pretty much like writing for your favorite sports team. Who wouldn’t want to be around and work with the organization you love all the time?”
Malloy, a resident of Chicago’s Beverly community, is still pinching himself about his accolades.
“Being recognized as the Chicago High School Journalist of the Year is something I don’t even think has fully set in yet,” he said. “All I can say is that I’m grateful that even one person looked at my work and thought it was worthy of being recognized. On the bus ride back to school after the awards ceremony, I thought a lot about how people like my parents, journalism teacher Mr. Tim Baffoe, judges of the awards, and everyone at Mount Carmel have now put me in a position where I can succeed. For that I’m grateful and want to say thank you to everyone that was involved.”
Baffoe had Malloy in his sophomore English class a couple years ago and more recently he’s been taking his 21st Century Media Class which is where the school newspaper is produced.
“Matt seems to have a natural talent for, and understanding for, the journalistic process,” Baffoe said. “What separates journalistic writing and writing in English and history classes, he can flip that switch very easily. From the beginning of his junior year when he started with the media course he was clearly above his peers in understanding the journalistic voice being different. I don’t know if it comes easy to him, but to me, on the outside looking in, he seems to be a natural. And, his inclination is more toward broadcasting.”
When Malloy was younger he would have to motivate himself to work hard in classes such as math, but he never had to do that in English.
“Essays, reading, writing and storytelling have always come pretty naturally to me and I think the first time I noticed this was when I was in third grade,” he said. “My teacher said we were going to try something new and then threw up a prompt on the board and said we had around a half hour to write a response to it. The prompt was something along the lines of ‘write about a time you were brave or overcame a challenge’ so I wrote about the first time I ever went on a roller coaster.”
Malloy proceeded to get in front of his fellow 8 and 9-year-old classmates at St. John Fisher and read his essay.
“My teacher was so impressed with my work that she called the vice principal and a couple of other teachers into the room and told me to tell them the story again,” he said. “It’s pretty funny because at first I thought I was in trouble, I mean why else would the vice principal be called in? Looking back at that now though, I see it as one of the building blocks for my writing career.”
He’s a busy kid. He’s playing volleyball now with the team at Mount Carmel this spring. He also has a leadership role in student council, plays the guitar and enjoys making videos for The Merchant, which is Mount Carmel’s official satirical news publication. In addition, he’s involved in the live broadcasts for many sports and school events at Mount Carmel with the Caravan Media Group and Caravan Broadcast Network. He also loves riding roller coasters.
“We’re incredibly proud of Matt,” Baffoe said. “To be honest, when we went to Northwestern I don’t think any of us, even his classmates, were expecting this. Because this was our first time at the conference period, and because we produce newspapers in class and not in extracurriculars we might’ve been the smallest staff there. … For him to be writing for two years and to walk away with the biggest award was pretty shocking nonetheless.”
Next fall Malloy will head to the University of Nebraska to pursue a degree in sports media and communication.
“Sports are a huge part of America’s culture,” he said. “And anyone that shows interest in or pays to watch and experience them has a right to be given correct information and well done reporting about the players, coaches and teams they love watching. I want to enter this field because of the excitement I receive when in the spot of being the messenger for people about a topic they are really interested in. Being a play-by-play broadcaster, in-studio host, radio host, or writer are just a few of the many things I would be very interested in going into as a career.”
The phrase, “There’s no place like Nebraska,” has stuck with Malloy.
“Nebraska has the equipment, mindset and people to help me grow as a young journalist,” he said. “They take rookies and mold them into superstars in pretty much any field of work or study you can think of. That’s awesome and I can’t wait to work hard and give things a whirl once I’m a student there.”
There’s also no place like Mount Carmel for Malloy, which is evident in the amount of time and effort he’s shared at the school, whether in writing for the school paper, helping broadcast athletics and other school events and being a friend and classmate.
“We talk about Men of Carmel and if you are an ideal Man of Carmel,” Baffoe said. “It would be great if we could have five hundred Matt Malloys in the world and community. It would be a better place, not just at the school.”
C.R. Walker is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
