{"id":8150,"date":"2025-07-22T21:01:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=8150"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T04:13:09","slug":"last-cherub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/last-cherub\/","title":{"rendered":"AP style battle comes down to last cherub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When cherubs walked into the lesson on AP Style, no one expected one of their own would leave a champion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instructors Mary Lou Song and Joe Grimm opened their AP style lesson like any other, with cherubs taking notes as they reviewed the basics. Surprised that none of the students had their own AP stylebooks, Professor Roger Boye provided copies for all 90 cherubs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cIt\u2019s a basic critical reference for journalists, and it&#8217;s loaded with information that goes beyond style,\u201d Boye said. \u201cYou can find it in virtually every newsroom in the country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cherubs piled on top of each other to get first pick of the fresh Associated Press stylebooks on the stage. Once they returned to their seats, Song announced they would compete to be the \u201cLast Cherub Standing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The budding journalists were given a quiz they were expected to finish in 15 minutes. Song read the answers aloud, and cherubs who had them correct remained standing. The others trickled back down into their seats.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To keep the energy up, Grimm tossed candy into the crowd. Eventually, two remained standing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cPeople were cheering,\u201d finalist Molly Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, of Washington, D.C., said. \u201cA lot of them were cheering because we were throwing candy at them, but people were very supportive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the end, Logan Syzmanski, of Edwardsville, Illinois, edged out Kurtzer-Ellenbogen on a question about how to write \u201cJuly Fourth\u201d in AP Style.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI was pumping my fist at the end,\u201d Syzmanski said, referring to the moment he realized he had won. \u201cIt was great.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Candy-fueled competition crowns ultimate Associated Press style champion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":8579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[505],"class_list":["post-8150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":505,"user_id":238,"is_guest":0,"slug":"logankreisberg","display_name":"Logan Kreisberg","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2cca2375699f0c63aa980639f2b181e34e7c2d3bbfe475130f380093ee34e9d2?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Kreisberg","first_name":"Logan","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8150"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10460,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8150\/revisions\/10460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8150"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}