Our local paper regularly does articles about individual students who perform at a high academic level (including perfect SAT scores), or who are exceptional athletes. They also highlight winning academic teams and sports teams. There have been some complaints in the community that too much attention is given to the athletes.
I imagine that at some point, they had to ask parental permission to interview the student and that this permission was granted. (Many years ago we turned down a reporter who wanted to do a feature about one of our children, but the child’s name still appeared as an award winner since we had signed a blanket release at the beginning of the school year.)