Student newspapers

[bandit957]

Did your school (especially high school) have a student newspaper?

The first high school I attended didn't really have one. Every so often (like every year or so), they would put out a multipage newsletter on green paper that they called a "newspaper", but it was really just a plaything for the older students. The content wasn't really very newspapery. Instead, it printed some of the stupidest, most immature stuff imaginable. It was also full of misspellings and incomprehensible nonsense.

My second high school didn't really have a newspaper either. When I was a junior, they assigned us to make a "newspaper", but it wasn't much better than the one at my other school. The teachers hovered over us the whole time to tell us what to write. Most of it was just recipes and stuff. I was able to write an article about some mayor in Ohio who banned MTV, but it was mostly just copied from a regular newspaper.

Most high school newspapers uncover problems at the school. We never got to do that.

When I went to NKU, there was a weekly student paper called the Northerner, which actually had newspaper-type content like news articles, serious letters, and police reports. I think it's still around, but only in website form, and isn't nearly as big as it used to be. I don't know if it has a print version at all anymore.

NKU also had something called the Lost Cause Review, but I remember the school defunding it because they didn't like its content. This was considered more of an "alternative" paper.

I also famously published a zine for decades, which started when I was a college freshman, but that was independent from school. You can only imagine some of the stuff that would have been included if I was publishing it in high school.

[Rothman]

Yes.

[hbelkins]

Yes. We actually had two versions of it. The first version was called "The Hub" and was distributed internally at the school. The second version was a page, produced by student journalists, that was published each month during the school year by the local newspaper. I was co-editor of what was called "The Enterprise Page" since the newspaper's name was The Beattyville Enterprise in my senior year.

[SEWIGuy]

Yes, we had an official newspaper. We also had an "underground" newspaper that was a little more edgy and critical of the school at times, but they still allowed it to be distributed in the building. My guess is that, being in Madison, WI, that some of that counter-culture stuff was encouraged.

[1995hoo]

Yes, we had an official newspaper. We also had an "underground" newspaper that was a little more edgy and critical of the school at times, but they still allowed it to be distributed in the building. My guess is that, being in Madison, WI, that some of that counter-culture stuff was encouraged.

That sounds kind of like my high school. The newspaper was published every two weeks; there was a journalism class that counted for academic credit (I took that class during my senior year). I recall some "underground" papers as well that the administration tried and failed to ban. I think they realized they'd probably lose on First Amendment grounds.

[Max Rockatansky]

We had one in high school.  I never read it once given I really didn't like my school nor the kids who were involved in writing said paper.

[JayhawkCO]

My high school had one that I rarely read. I did the crossword puzzle daily in the University Daily Kansan and brought the "smack pages" to basketball games.

[SectorZ]

I don't remember having one in high school. In fifth and sixth grade in elementary school I was part of one. The three that created the one in fifth grade got to be on a TV show called "Ready to Go" on a Boston station discussing it, and interviewed by of all people Matt Lauer before he became famous and grabby.

[NWI_Irish96]

My HS didn't have one, but I worked for my college paper.

[Scott5114]

I was the editor of mine my senior year. I doubt my version of it was very popular with the students, though, because 1) nobody liked me anyway 2) I tried to enforce some semblance of journalistic integrity (sorry that you took this class for the easy A so you can stay eligible for football, but I'm not going to let you just copy paste articles off the Internet or write blatantly biased rah-rah things about the school), 3) I would include hard news items that people considered boring, but I imagine if anyone saved any of them for their scrapbook or whatever it would provide context as to what was going on in the world at the time.

Oh well, at least the typography was immaculate.

[Brandon]

Yes, and you'll love this story, Bandit.

We had a newspaper in high school, published four times during the school year.  During my senior year, the school newspaper decided to do a bit more actual investigative journalism that wound up being rather critical of the school administration.  They were critical of how the fees for student parking were used as the student parking lot was full of potholes while the faculty parking lot was pothole-free.  The paper couldn't figure out what the fees were actually being used for.  This got printed, and the administration was pissed.  They threatened to completely censor and even shut down the paper for simply being critical of the administration.

[Rothman]

An administration getting upset about a student newspaper reeks of "We're all in this prison together."

[DandyDan]

My high school had an official one and an underground newspaper which I am sure they tried banning because my mom, who was a para at my high school for my junior and senior year, gave me and my brother a lecture at the dinner table once about how everything was wrong in the underground paper.

[Takumi]

My school had an official paper, and briefly an underground paper my junior year. The sole writer for the underground paper got in trouble for it, but it was at the end of the school year and he was already graduating anyway.

[Max Rockatansky]

Is the underground school newspaper the olde tyme version of the uncensored school Facebook group?

[Scott5114]

An administration getting upset about a student newspaper reeks of "We're all in this prison together."

Or someone in administration was embezzling the fees and was livid that the damn kids figured it out...