Yoni Zacks ’25 is the recipient of this year’s Minnesota Journalist of the Year, awarded by the Minnesota High School Press.

When asked to reflect on his time as a member of the Spectrum staff, Zacks explained: “I’ve always loved journalism and I’ve always loved the idea of being a journalist. I enjoy telling people’s stories because it’s really fun getting to hear from a bunch of different people about something that they are really passionate about.”      

     Zacks has been on Spectrum staff since freshman year. He recounted that “there was a recruitment on our very first assembly and I knew then and there that [it] was a club I wanted to join. I went to that first staff meeting, and then came back every week that year, and then was [an] editor for all of sophomore year, and then I was Editor-in-Chief for the first semester this year.”

     He recalled with fondness a recent story he covered on the retirement of hockey coach, Rob McClanahan, and described how “it really just kind of showed me how big of an impact he had, and how much people loved him because even former players were still talking about him because of the impact he made on them as players and as leaders and just as people in general.”

     Zacks plans to continue his passion for writing as a major in Journalism at Northwestern University this coming fall.