Meet the Sharkie: Olivia Tan of Francis W. Parker High School in Chicago

Olivia Tan, a junior this year at Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, has won a 2012 Sharkie for her work on The Inquirer news team during the Summer 2012 session of Newsroom by the Bay.

From left to right: Collin Baker, Clare Mathias and Olivia Tan, along with team leader Leah Yeung, at the presentation of the 2012 Sharkie Awards during the Multimedia Showcase on June 30.

In her application essay submitted prior to camp, Tan expressed a strong desire to learn about digital journalism. “(A)s layout and design editor at my school’s newspaper, I want to put the paper online,” she wrote. “The future of journalism is online.”

No sooner had Tan arrived at NBTB than she made a beeline for Scott Landis, a team leader who pioneered the publication of OR Magazine on the iPadwhen he was a student at the University of Oregon. As the week progressed and students immersed themselves in reporting projects, it wasn’t unusual to see Tan and Landis deep in conversation about how Tan could jumpstart digital journalism at her school.

Team leader Scott Landis shared his knowledge of iPad publishing with Summer 2013 studentTan brought persistence and purpose to her week at Stanford, according to Kelsey Reid, her team leader

“NBTB was valuable to me in ways that I would never have dreamed of,” Tan wrote us.

“I learned many ways to integrate different kinds of media into journalism and hope to bring my knowledge to my school’s paper this year.”

At last report, Tan was busy working on a website as well as iPad plans. “We are working on doing the iPad publishing,” she wrote. “First we are working on getting a website for our paper, which is going really well so far. A lot of what I learned at NBTB is going into that process. “I think realistically, we are planning to get iPad publishing up and running next year after our website is finished.”