For the second year in a row, students from Mepham High School’s Bellmore-Merrick Broadcasting program have earned second place in the NBC Universal and Adobe national contest “The Edit.” 

The Edit is a digital storytelling contest that challenges students to tell a story about the concept of Wellness.   

According to NBC, over 30,000 students from 600 schools nationwide participated in the contest.  

“The Edit is a great opportunity for BMB students to demonstrate the digital storytelling concepts they learn every day in the BMB program,” said teacher Matt Russell, whose class produced the winning entries both this year and last. 

Juniors Oliver Mattes, Nicole Saraceni, and Mia Haffner teamed up to create the winning entry, which combined interviews, graphics, and a B-roll to tell how physical activity and education help create balance and mental well-being and wellness.  

“Most of the stories we do for BMB focus on school and community events, working on a news story about an important topic like wellness was a different kind of challenge,” noted Haffner, who has been in the program since her freshman year.   

To complete the project the students combined materials provided by NBC and Adobe with curricular materials used daily in BMB.   

Junior Nicole Saraceni described the reporting and editing process during the contest. 

“We scheduled the interviews and crafted interview questions like on a normal BMB story, but this time we also created graphics using the footage NBC gave us,” she explained. 

The BMB program is currently in its ninth year at Mepham.   

Students from across the district can apply for entry in eighth grade. Over the course of their four years in the program, BMB students learn the basics of digital storytelling by creating short films and news packages, studio shows, and live sports coverage.   

You can view the winning story on the Friday, April 11, edition of the nationally recognized BMB Morning Announcements broadcast on BMB YouTube.