Christine CarrilloIt is there in the pages....

Christine Carrillo

It is there in the pages.

Whether in the Newport Harbor High School Beacon, Corona del Mar

High School’s Trident, Costa Mesa High School’s Hitching Post or El

Aguila, Spanish for the Eagle, at Estancia High School in Costa Mesa,

the essence of high school journalism, good and bad alike, is hard to

mistake.

Often, it seems to burst right through the pages.

“I think the biggest problem school newspapers have is they just

become gossip sheets,” said Joan Alvarez, the journalism advisor at

Corona del Mar High. “As a high school paper our goal is ...

spreading the word and being the voice of the high school body.”

Exploring the world of journalism by, often, blindly reaching into

every nook and cranny of their campus, high school journalists dabble

in the watchdog function of the press without actually diving into

the trenches.

“It’s a struggle because in high school there’s only so much you

can write about so it’s hard to come up with stuff,” said 17-year-old

Jillian Ukropina, a co-editor-in-chief at Corona del Mar High. “We

brainstorm and it just happens.”

Few of the journalism programs at the four high schools adopt

professional journalistic practices like “beats,” areas of the

community or coverage area that reporters are assigned to. While

Costa Mesa High is the only paper to have actually assigned reporters

to certain “beats” on campus, the other three schools have found

that, based on the students’ interests, many of them end up

establishing their own kind of “beat” system.

KEEP THEM COMING BACK

The students also get only a taste of certain “musts” in

journalism in regards to writing styles. Whether it’s learning the

mechanics of writing leads or trying to follow Associated Press

style, the writing guide nearly all journalists follow, students get

an introduction to journalism without being bombarded with too many

technical nuances.

“It’s important for people who actually want to pursue a career

[in journalism], but it’s also character building in that you learn

how to work through it,” said 16-year-old Sara Bryant, coeditor in

chief for the Hitching Post at Costa Mesa High. “When push comes to

shove we always do it.”

As student editors, and not professional scribes waiting to pounce

on whatever moves, Bryant and her fellow newsroom leaders face

additional challenges that in the professional world would rarely, if

every, happen: students not being able to get their stories reported

because they have class, students doing a slapdash job because of

their apathy for the subject.

In that environment, student editors have to struggle to keep

their reporters on task.

They do face one challenge familiar in professional newsrooms:

reporters not meeting deadline.

LEARN BY DOING

For these freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, much of what

they know about journalism they have learned from doing -- something

their advisors insist on.

“My role is to kind of give the students broad guidance and

encourage them to take responsibility for designing the paper,

creating the paper and then to kind of, in the final stage, make sure

the paper is something that represents our school well,” said Tom

Moody, Estancia journalism teacher.

While some of the advisors have backgrounds as professional

journalists, others have none and have had to learn and research as

they go along.

Despite their personal experience, the advisors all agree a high

school paper’s not about them.

They each encourage their students to take control of the paper

year after year, and make their voices heard. How much the students

actually do that, however, often depends on the personalities of the

newspaper staff.

CENSORING THEMSELVES

Since none of the schools expressed any censorship problems with

their administration, in part because of the students’ understanding

of what is and is not appropriate material, the more than 90 high

school students involved in journalism in Newport-Mesa are the only

ones to stifle their creativity and drive.

Only one school takes full advantage of its youthful audience and

the fact that it’s a product of a learning environment by pushing the

limits of journalism to the fullest.

Newport Harbor High’s Beacon has tested student tolerance with a

section called The Stow Away, which initially baffled students

because the section is printed upside down, and opened its arms to

the Spanish-speaking student population with a strictly Spanish page.

Whether they stand out on a creative limb, delve into

controversial issues, like the war on Iraq, or give students the

highlights of Winter Formal, high school journalists know their

responsibility to their readers and execute it with pride.

“For me, it’s all about just trying to cover everything we should

be covering,” said 17-year-old Kate Guesman, coeditor in chief. “It’s

just really important to keep students informed about what’s really

going on.”

* CHRISTINE CARRILLO covers education and may be reached at (949)

574-4268 or by e-mail at [email protected].