About 40 students from local schools will fill our newsroom this afternoon for a reception honoring the winners of our Student Gazette journalism contest.

Each May since 1999, we have published The Student Gazette, a supplement that features the stories, photos, cartoons and advertisements that have been judged the best from the hundreds of entries we receive each year.

Today is the day we hand out awards, serve up pizza and take photographs of the winners.

It should be interesting. For the first time this year, the reception will actually be in the newsroom, not in our more formal downstairs conference room. That should give the winners - some of whom we hope will one day join our profession - an idea of what goes into putting out a daily newspaper.

Look for this year's Student Gazette on May 15, when it will be inserted into our print edition.