Student journalism wasn’t a natural fit for me. And that’s why it was so important.
Student journalism is a weird thing. At least it has been for me. It was one of the most unlikely things for me to ever stumble upon, yet it somehow happened.
I’ve never wanted to be a journalist. I didn’t before high school, I didn’t during high school, and I still don’t. Despite all of this, my involvement in student journalism with my high school’s paper was among the most rewarding experiences I ever got from those four years.
Full disclosure: I’m a guy in college. I went to an all-male, Catholic preparatory school for seven years. I’m a political centrist. I’m in a fraternity and I’m majoring in finance and history. You can probably make other stereotypical assumptions about me and there’s a good chance they’d be correct. Suffice it to say, I may not be the stereotype for the kid who walks into a newsroom. Certainly not in high school. But like I said, student journalism had a huge impact on my life. How?
Well, it all started one early November night during my freshman year of high school. I happened to be in the graphic design lab that (unbeknownst to me) doubled as the newspaper’s main work room. There was a junior who turned from the row in front of me, asked me my name, and asked, “how would you like to write for [publication name]?”
I’m not a huge fan of writing. But then again, I was a still new freshman, and to have a much older kid reach out to me like that struck me, so I said sure. I wrote an article or two that year, but I wasn’t very involved with the publication freshman year.
Sophomore year, I took Graphic Design, thinking it’d be a decently easy A and more enjoyable than Ceramics or Studio Art to fulfill my required art credit. What I wasn’t thinking about was how the newspaper’s adviser was the teacher for that class.
Soon, I was in the graphic design lab after school brushing up work for the class. Then I wound up in there for a pitch meeting or two, and my teacher asked me if I wanted to take a crack at doing headline designs. Within a year I’d be the Managing Director for Print while designing almost daily and writing articles once a month for each issue.
Long prologue, right? Don’t worry, it gets more substantive from here. All of that is important to show just unlikely it is that I’d wind up deeply involved with student journalism. Yet here I am some years later, drafting a column about the impact that the publication had on my high school years.
Those long odds weren’t beat without reason, though. I still didn’t totally love newswriting. Coming in on weekends to slog through hours of layout design weren’t my favorite activities in the world. Why did I do it?
You see, I wasn’t the only guy like me in that newsroom. In fact, I’d say that about 70% of us were pretty similar to me — and just as unlikely to be involved in anything remotely like student journalism). The other 30% were perhaps not like me, but still not the most likely characters to be spearheading an award-winning high school publication.
How do a bunch of unlikely student journalists wind up being recognized as among the best in their area? We had awards from CSPA, JEA, NSPA, state competitions, two state student journalists of the year during my tenure, the list goes on.
Perhaps our most important metric of “success,” though, was that people actually read the paper on campus. When we put it out on stands across campus, you could see the stands progressively emptying with the passing of days and weeks. Our stories sparked conversations in our classes among peers. Teachers commended us on our work, some even pitched us stories themselves or told us of arguments and discussions our stories had inspired amongst themselves and their coworkers. At that point, it wasn’t just us that cared about our work, it was the community. That’s what gave us a whole new sense of purpose and drive.
That culture of success and professionalism was exemplified by our adviser. She would go to bat for us any day for any cause, but she never did the work for us. We had to earn it, but she knew how to get the most out of us. She led from the front. She inspired. But perhaps most important to all of this, is that she kept it fun. We worked hard, but we made sure that there were smiles and laughs all along the way.
We gave student voice a platform it’d never had before at my school. We wrote important articles that ruffled feathers but not in a spiteful way. We told stories that needed telling and explored news and phenomena on campus in ways that nobody else could or would.
But we stuck around because it was fun. It became cool to us. We found it worthwhile. Those guys were and still are among my best friends. We had donuts at meetings, inside jokes galore, and kept the atmosphere loose. Our work was important, it was meaningful, and it was totally unique on campus to our organization.
With all of that, we gained an appreciation for journalism that we wouldn’t have otherwise learned. The culture of that newsroom enabled us to learn a lot from journalism. It took a bunch of unlikely student journalists and enabled us to find joy and pride in the work. None of us may have walked across the graduation stage with the intention of being a news writer for life, but we all took away an appreciation for the unique space that journalism occupies and the power it wields.
High school journalism is a strange phenomenon. It’s a unique idea that does not necessarily fit into the stereotype of what a teenager wants to do. It’s kids punching way above their weight to tackle issues a lot of adults either don’t think they can handle, or don’t want them handling. For an unconventional activity, exponentially moreso in our case due to the nature of our high school, it took a special person to captain the ship.
Our adviser (to my knowledge) had (and still might not really have much of any) “formal” education in student journalism. She learned journalism by applying 110% of herself to learning everything she could about it. She was (and is) passionate and it showed.
When someone cares deeply about something, it rubs off on everyone around them. That attitude rubbed off onto us staffers, from the seasoned senior EICs down through the new freshman writer that was scared out of his mind.
That’s why we were a sustainable operation that thrived. Our adviser cared. She still cares. A lot of us still talk to her regularly. It’s why I’m writing this piece.
Team and community
Another of our staff’s strengths: We weren’t only known as “newspaper kids.” We all had passions and pursuits beyond the newspaper. We had athletes, theater kids, and everything in between on our editorial board. Newspaper wasn’t what we did, it was just one of the things we did.
Our staff thrived because we all cared about different things outside of journalism. We could write great stories from great sources because we weren’t simply identified as journalists who were trying to dig up any dirt we could. We cared about the community, and we used our journalism to show it.
I went to three National High School Journalism Conventions with our staff, and I met a lot of people on other staffs. The passion of a lot of people was undeniable, but I found some fellow students that either seemed to be intent on fighting the world and exposing people through journalism rather than telling stories, or solely committed themselves to journalism and nothing else. That’s great and all, but it actually can be a disservice to your publication.
If administration is stonewalling you, ask polite questions to figure out why. Don’t try and start a fight or give in to emotion. Be reasonable. Be rational. Chase your story to the bitter end, but always be respectful and maintain the dignity of yourself and the publication. If you go looking for a fight, adults won’t take you seriously. If you act older than your years, you’ll gain their respect and trust to handle sensitive material. Lean on those other relationships around campus that you build.
Intellectually diverse staffs that have a broad reach and maintain good connections across campus build better publications than those that are adversarial and stick to their newsroom without participating in anything else. Get out there, be involved in the wider school community, and don’t give in to factionalism or “us vs. them” thinking.
Your staff will be strongest by drawing not only from those who are deeply invested in journalism, but also by attracting talent that may not have been interested in student journalism before.
So, how does this relate to culture? You need the right person at the top to guide this ship, but you also need a staff that’s going to buy in. We worked phenomenally well not only because our advisor believed in us and built a staff culture that looked to do things the right way, but also because we as a staff carried that mantle and kept each other in check.
I learned how to write better, communicate through design, interview, and speak publicly. I developed incredible bonds with my fellow staff members and the adults that helped up along the way. Through student journalism I built a large base of skills and relationships that I continue to draw on today through all parts of my life.
Student journalism can be so much more than just the paper it’s printed on, but it takes effort. As a consequence of staff culture, I know that my own experience flowered into a demonstrably positive experience, when for many people like me it never even gets off the ground.
Ethan Rowley is currently a student at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC, where he is double majoring in History and Finance. He is originally from Devon, PA, where his parents, younger sister, and four dogs still live. In his free time, he enjoys playing soccer, rock climbing, and reading.
Great example of your craft E. Thanks for sharing. Go Deacons!