Students and advisers say high school journalism matters

Before coming to the national journalism high school student’s convention, students all over the nation fall in love with journalism. These students begin to spend more and more time in their journalism rooms whether because of funny moments with fellow staff members, an affinity for writing or the joy of sharing people’s stories.
Nash Elder, a student journalist from Juan Diego Catholic High School in Draper, Utah, is one of these students. After going to the San Diego Spring National High School Journalism Convention in his freshman year, he became engrossed in journalism.
“The sessions that I went to were really interesting and I really got to bond with the staff members of our school,” Elder said. “I think that friendly atmosphere surrounding that newspaper and that staff really brought me into journalism, and now I really enjoy it.”
Now Elder is a veteran journalist who loves writing and design alike.
“I really enjoy the writing and getting quotes and fitting them together within my writing because I think it is a piece of art for me,” Elder said. “I like the telling of other people’s stories and I really like to get those stories out there.”
However, Elder’s feelings toward journalism aren’t unique at the Sheraton Hotel in Denver, Colorado housing the convention center for more than 2,500 high school journalists. Many students, like Suzy Stone, a senior at Phyllis High School in Puyallup, Washington, feel at home among other student journalists.
“Our staff is so awesome and we are together so much that we know each other so well. We get each other,” Stone said. “We know how everyone works.”
Advisers play a large role in the excitement and unity that journalism can create. Journalism Education Association (JEA) mentor Carol Smith knows how important fostering interest in the program is.
“I mentor in a small school and there are four kids in there. So if four kids are putting out the newspaper, they have to be interested in it,” Smith said. “Usually my role is to help the adviser help the students be interested in it. But sometimes I do powerpoints teaching them lessons on captions or interviewing and those kinds of things. Sometimes just the fact that I am there and I’m not their adviser makes them seem interested anyway.”
Stone’s teacher helped get her involved when she mailed her a letter, requesting that she join the program.
“We got recruiting letters from the adviser asking us to join and I had no prior interest to join journalism. I thought it was cool, I was like ‘Oh, wow. It’s so official; I got a letter. They want me on the team,’” Stone said. “I thought we were all just going to be sitting there writing the entire time, but it is so scatter-brained, all over the place. It’s different every day.”
Students such as Elder and Stone enjoy the variety that journalism offers, and the moments of hilarity that are integral to extracurricular programs like journalism.
“During deadlines for the print edition, we have family dinners and our last family dinner our Editor in Chief brought in nachos,” Stone said. “His mom prepared them for 20-plus people, and there were only twelve of us there and we ate them all. But it’s fine.”
Elder also has had funny moments when staying after school, reaching late into the night, to finish the newspaper in time.
“So we have work nights with our staff when the paper is about to come out. One time we were just messing around and I was in Photoshop and I was Photoshopping people’s pictures for the page. I Photoshoped an ad for Aquafina. It was me drinking Aquafina and I put their logo on it. I sent it to them, but they rejected it, unfortunately.”
While journalism serves as an outlet for student opinion and good times shared by the student journalists, it also has many practical purposes. Smith sees how journalism prepares students for future endeavors in college and beyond.
“The thing is even if the person isn’t going to be a journalist, every person needs to learn responsibility, meeting deadlines, how to work well with others, how to be the best you can and good teamwork skills. All those things are taught in journalism plus great writing skills, not necessarily English creative writing skills, but it’s in college they want you to tell what’s really important and it helps you figure out what’s really important in the stories that you are writing.”
By Abby Kempf
photo by Renata Williams

Across the Country: where are conventioneers from?

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Selective funding produces variety of costs

Journalism students from states across the country are currently milling about the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel in Denver, Colorado while attending the Denver Spring National High School Journalism Convention. Whether to come for the fun and the stories or to compete in competitions and earn national awards, these students share one thing in common: a passion for journalism.
“We are one of the Best in Show finalists, so we decided to come and learn more about what we can do for next year and how to be better than the past year,” Anthony Pangonas, a senior from Rouse High School in Leander, Texas said. “It is cool to see different people’s yearbooks and hear from them and how they went through the process and learn what they did differently so we can do better [in the future].”
Pangonas comes from a school of about 2,400, a reasonably large size for a high school compared to the national average of 752 students in a high school, according to NCES Statistical Analysis Report. He said their journalism program gathered enough money from fundraising and got enough people to come to the convention to split the cost and to make it “reasonably cheap per kid.”
However, not every high school journalism student has the luxury of being able to gather enough money through fundraising or through money given by their districts. Kierstin Collins, a senior from Yukon High School in the namesake city in Oklahoma, said her school provided no help and there was minimal fundraising to help curb the cost of convention.

“We flew on a plane for an hour and a half from Oklahoma,” Collins said. “We sell ads [to raise money], so I guess that is accounted for, but [most of it] is just out of our pockets.”
The journalism peers who came with her to convention along with herself hail from a school size of around 2000 and are all Pacemaker Finalists. For them, they saw no money coming from their school or district to support them in their competition for the prestigious Pacemaker title.
For most students and for many advisers, the journalism convention is a time to learn new things for their publications in order to be better the following year. This is the case for Cindy Todd, an adviser from Westlake High School in Austin, Texas.
“Everything I learned about how to be a journalism teacher and yearbook adviser, or newspaper adviser too, I learned at conventions like this,” Todd said. “My kids want to come for the experience of going to sessions where people teach about everything, some of which I can’t teach.”
Todd’s group is also here because they are Pacemaker Finalists. She said going to conventions is the best part of her job. For her students, it is a time to look toward the new year and get different, unique ideas to make their publication even better.
However, just like every other journalism group that comes to conventions, they will have to find a way to pay for the travel, hotel and registration costs. Todd said her class is lucky because of a strong tradition within their school.
“We have a healthy balance in our yearbook fund [because we] sell senior ads in our yearbook and we sell a lot,” Todd said. “That is our biggest fundraising source. We pay for [convention] ourselves through our activity fund and we raise the money [through] selling senior ads.”
With a school of around 2,600 students, Todd said her program has no trouble selling senior ads because senior ads are a “really strong tradition” in Westlake High School.
Another source of money for students is through support from their school districts and their own high schools. While most of the money Todd’s class raised came from their own hard work, she said they got a small amount of money for travel from her school.
For Crystal Fetterhoff, a junior from Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colorado, the pain of paying for convention was largely taken care of by their school.
“We got a scholarship recently and our teacher figured everything else out,” Fetterhoff said. “We just had to bring money for food.”
By Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Kafi[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/125292243″]

School support aids in success

Because of the nature of high school journalism, the success of the program largely depends on the school district’s backing and support.
While some schools are lucky enough to have understanding administrators and a budget big enough to cover the cost of conventions and printing, others have little to no support from the school. Some schools even work to squander the voice of student journalists when they wish to write about sensitive or controversial topics.
“I wouldn’t say [the school] is exactly against us, but they are not completely supportive of [journalism,]” Nash Kelly, a student at Mount Michael Benedictine High School in Omaha, Nebraska, said. “There have been a few crack downs on it this year. So they are blocking it up a little bit. Overall it’s not bad, but it is not the best.”
The Supreme Court Case Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier 1988 serves as precedent in the legality of a school to limit the first amendment right to freedom of the press exercised by their student journalists. In the case the Supreme Court ruled that schools could use prior restraint when reviewing and censoring their students articles.
However, not all schools are subject to prior restraint or other censorship. Halley Kenney, a student journalist at Lakes Community High School in Lake Villa, Illinois, said her school largely supports the journalism program and allows the students the freedom to publish whatever they choose.
“Our school definitely supports us. And our principals are awesome, [they] let us put whatever we want in our newspaper,” Kenney said. “They don’t check the newspaper before. They just trust us to go do what we want and they let us write anything we want really.”
 
Kenney’s school also helps financially by encouraging a lot of fundraising to ensure the program can get whatever it needs. Fundraising can be an important tool for students to have the opportunity to attend conventions, even if they can’t afford it themselves.
“We had an event at Red Mango. We raffled off tickets to win an iPad mini that Red Mango gave to us. We got a portion of the profit from the sales that day. We sold pizza coupons to people around our school and we got a portion of the profit from that,” Kenney said. “We sell ads in our newspaper and that goes towards [convention.] We are also selling spots in our newspaper for seniors in our senior goodbye issue. We are doing concession stands at our school.”
Besides helping to alleviate with convention costs, Kenney’s school makes sure that the journalism program can afford updated equipment and color printed newspapers.

“We have a student media program and it is a pretty big program. We have a budget each year and part of our budget went to new cameras and we got a new macbook lab for our newspaper and a whole set up for broadcast, so I think they support it,” Kenney said. “The student body has more support for certain sports. But I wouldn’t say that we are lacking though; there are definitely people who support us.”
Kelly, however, said that his school is overall more invested in sports than any other program.
“They are far more supportive of sports than anything to do with the arts,” Kelly said. “It’s kind of sad.”
Lack of funding for programs like journalism are problematic, to say the least. Students who are in journalism during high school have higher ACT scores, better grades during high school and better grades their freshman year of college than other students, according to a study titled High School Journalism Matters published by the American Press Institute.
In the study Candace Perkins Bowen, the executive director of the Ohio State Organization of High School Journalism, said she believes funding for journalism is currently a big problem in the U.S..
“It s a combination of what is required for No Child Left Behind coupled with funding issues in a lot of places,” Bowen said. “School districts are not passing levies, so the schools are cutting frill stuff and going with bigger classes to streamline things.”
Advisers also play a role in the process of receiving funds for their programs. Advisers who encourage fundraising allow a larger group of students to attend convention. But some, like Kristin Kron, the journalism adviser at Littleton High School in Littleton, Colorado, do not place importance on fundraising and instead rely on their students and the school to foot the bill.
“We are local so our kids just paid to come; we are just commuting in. But in the past we have gotten some support [from the school,] and they are overall supportive of our products. But they wouldn’t necessarily pay for all of us to come to a convention, and the stay and the flight,” Kron said. “We have never done fundraisers for it, just because I am terrible at them. We usually just rely on the kids.”
By Abby Kempf