Best of SNO Returns to Spotlight the Nation’s Best Student Journalism

SNO Sites’ recognition program returns Sept. 21 following a record year of submissions.

HASTINGS, MN, UNITED STATES, August 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Across thousands of student newsrooms on the SNO Sites platform, journalists are producing more quality work, and reaching more readers, than ever. The reporting is ambitious, polished, and worthy of a wide audience, and Best of SNO, the program that recognizes the best of that work, opens for its 2026–2027 season on Sept. 21.

During the 2025–2026 school year, SNO Sites received over 15,000 story submissions to Best of SNO, an average of roughly 115 per academic day, and republished over 2,000 of them on BestofSNO.com. With more schools joining SNO each month, this season is expected to be busier still.

“Best of SNO provides participating schools with the opportunity to receive almost immediate recognition for their outstanding work, while giving student journalists and advisers around the country a one-stop source for contemporary examples of excellent student journalism,” said Kyle Phillips, who manages the Best of SNO recognition program for SNO Sites, a company that provides publishing solutions for thousands of scholastic and collegiate journalism programs.

Best of SNO is the writing component of SNO’s Distinguished Sites recognition program. Any SNO Sites member may submit one eligible story per day throughout the academic year, and reviewers select the top 10 to 15 percent for republication. Selection standards are high by design. Best of SNO is meant to be a teaching tool as much as a recognition program, one that rewards quality work and gives students across the country a model to study and strive to match.

The program also reflects a broader change in the news landscape. As local newspapers continue to disappear, student newsrooms are increasingly covering the school boards, city councils, and elections that once relied on shrinking print staffs. Best of SNO gives that reporting a national audience and one of the only sources of near-immediate feedback available in the field.

Anyone can now see that readership take shape in real time through SNO Trending Stories (trending.snosites.com), a free, public tool that surfaces the stories and topics resonating with readers across the country as they gain momentum.

Best of SNO will begin accepting submissions on Sept. 21, 2026. Participating schools can submit one eligible story per day throughout the academic year.

About SNO Sites
Founded in 2008, SNO Sites provides fully managed WordPress publishing solutions for scholastic and collegiate journalism programs. In recent years, a growing number of local, community, and nonprofit news publishers have also joined the platform, drawn to the same hosting, design, training, and support that SNO provides to thousands of newsrooms worldwide. Together, they empower journalists to publish professional-quality work.

Tom Hutchinson
SNO Sites
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