One of the hardest good-byes I’m in the middle of making is to my newspaper staff. They are a group of 28 students, mostly juniors, who have been with me for at least two years—some three, when they took intro to journalism.
A couple of months ago, we sent in our nomination packet for the Free-Lance Star’s high school journalism awards contest. This is a contest wherein we send our best stories, photographs, and layouts to the paper for judging against all of the other papers in the greater Fredericksburg area. For the most part the same schools win everything, partially because they’re good papers but also because the FLS more or less has their minds made up before the contest even begins.
Sour grapes aside, I do enjoy picking the best of the year, and this year I nominated the entire 28-member staff for one of their special awards, which honors distinguished journalism. We didn’t win that award (in fact, the awards committee decided that nobody was worthy of the award this year) but I did share my nomination letter at the staff’s annual end-of-year pizza party (which is highlighted by the “We Were Screwed” awards ceremony, honoring those who won, those who we thought should have won, and superlatives and other honors).
Running the student newspaper has been a very fun experience these last few years and I feel that I’ve done a solid job of helping these students bring it from nothing to something to be proud of. What follows are excerpts (cleaned up slightly to protect names, etc.) from that letter.
Now, I am not going to ramble on about how wonderful it is to work with this group of kids. To be honest with you, I am surprised I don’t have several ulcers because this paper is (to use a geeky reference) the Millennium Falcon of high school newspapers—half the time, things don’t work but we can still blow you away. I have taught these students for the past three years and this year’s eight issues were definitely fraught with the usual frustrations that I’ve come to expect from running a high school newspaper. Writers have been late or completely blown off deadlines, we cut an entire section because it wasn’t done on time, and two of our issues were missing pages or had the wrong pages because of a printing error. Producing each issue is a month of pushing, prodding, sighing, cursing, and screaming for me and very often “let’s sit around for two weeks and then get started” for them.
I know that doesn’t speak highly to anyone’s skills as an adviser or editor and if this were a professional publication we would have gone under a long time ago. My staff would be proud to say that they resemble Mad’s “Usual Gang of Idiots” way more than the staff of The New York Times. But I think the chaos is important. On one hand we seem to thrive on it much like the myriad of places I’ve worked where the best work has been done under the gun. On the other hand it allows for more mistakes. But one of the best ways to learn, especially when it’s writing and editing, is to make mistakes. Over the course of the past year the editors and staff have clearly learned from those mistakes and I know that they all have a sense of the paper’s strengths and play to them whenever possible.
Those strengths are what have inspired this nomination. As I looked through this year’s issues for pieces and layouts that were worthy of individual awards and might show how we have grown as a newspaper in 2007-2008, I saw a paper that was more sure of itself than ever. Of course, I should have known that in September when we left the FLS journalism workshop and my editors told me they wanted to keep our tabloid format with a photo cover page because it “makes us stand out.”
They then went on to produce eight issues worthy of that bravado. The highlights are too numerous to count, though I will mention a few: a thorough article on the truth behind the MRSA panic in October; a writer going out of his way to get a story on the consequences for athlete misbehavior, traveling to Charlottesville to interview UVA’s director of NCAA compliance; after one commentator lambasted cheerleading for not being a sport in his half of a point-counterpoint article, we received a letter to the editor that he skillfully responded to without resorting to the type of personal insults common among teenagers, especially those who spend too much time on the Internet; a news department with a strong work ethic in reporting on issues and events that had an impact on students, from the possible cancellation of the ASL program to a profile of the school’s most beloved substitute; a sports staff that expanded the paper’s coverage to include all of Chancellor’s teams as often as possible; and two editors who took a chance on a story of teen pregnancy, interviewing a teen mother as well as those in the school who provide services so pregnancy doesn’t completely derail a student’s academic career. The article also served to clear up some of the rumors about what seems to be an epidemic of teen pregnancy this year; however, it was ultimately rejected upon administrative review and never saw the light of day. They learned a hard lesson about high school journalism but handled it with maturity, professionalism, and poise.
We may not be your choice for best paper. I feel we contend but know that we, as often is the case with many things to do with our school, often find ourselves clawing our way to respectability among our journalistic peers. When I look at the list of names on my staff and see several students I wanted to completely write off last year who stepped up and improved by leaps and bounds and see that everything we’ve all put into the paper has paid off substantially, I am more than satisfied; I am proud. Of course, I know the ultimate test is coming up. The paper will be without me next year, a year when so many of them are on the cusp of greatness. It’s my hope that they will not only meet but will exceed my expectations and when you read their submission packet next year you’ll not just see “distinguished” work, you’ll see superior work.
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