Reporting and Writing
Writing is the core of what any newspaper staff does. Ultimately, I aim to get information out to the public, and writing is the most straightforward and conventional way to do so. Since becoming editor-in-chief, in an effort to establish trust with our audience, I have especially made a point to ensure that every story goes in the correct category and stays within the limits of that category. Most importantly, this means eliminating bias from news and feature stories, or encouraging the writer to switch to an opinion if this is not possible. In writing my own stories, I have found one thing that elevates them above all else: the ability to become interested in anything. In becoming invested in the subject I write about, not only does every article feel like an enjoyable rant about my interests, people reading my stories can tell that the writer thought through every detail and cared about the topic.
NEWS
The school board elections hardly ever get any notice, but they arguably have the biggest direct impact on the student body. After the election, a new school board member, Dr. Robin Dehlinger, took one seat, with a close race between two candidates resulting in a runoff for the other. I reached out to all three prospective members and set up phone calls with the two I received a response from. (For the sake of transparency and objectivity, I made it clear in the article that I had not heard from the third, but included information from her campaign website.) To this day, the interviews I did for this story remain some of the longest I have ever conducted. Talking to politicians requires patience, careful listening and clever questions, since they both talked for nearly an hour while avoiding directly answering my questions with a comical amount of precision. Even so, I enjoyed speaking with these women, as they were both well-educated and influential in a way that inspired me as a young woman with an interest in politics.
Aug. 20 elections result in changes to school board
Chorus embraces love in Pop Concert
This was a ton of fun to cover. I'd never gone to a chorus concert before, so I had no idea what to expect. I asked some of the performers about what it would be like, and read through a few chorus stories from previous years so I knew what I was going into, but I was still amazed by the performance. With detailed choreography, impressive solos and even coordinated outfits, the chorus students clearly put a lot of thought and effort into their concert. With this in mind, I was able to ask students what they were most excited about, and share in their enthusiasm. I wrote the story in a descriptive style different from my usual writing, which outlined every part of the event as if the reader was watching it. I also videoed and photographed the concert, and attached a news video and photo gallery to the story.
I'm not in band or theater, but I heard that both programs had previously hung up pride flags in their classrooms as a symbol of inclusivity, but were told by school administration to take them down. This seemed like a minor issue, but it was symbolic of something much larger, and since the students were very distressed about it, I decided that it was well worth covering. I spoke with band and theater students, contacted their teachers and even interviewed the principal (my first time doing so) to find out what exactly happened and why. In the end, when I had a full picture of the incident, I published the story anonymously. I was really surprised at how many people read the story, and even though most students didn't know I wrote it, those who did told me they appreciated it. A year later, I even saw that one of my new teachers had put up the printed page (with a PHOTO of a pride flag) in their classroom because they couldn't use a real flag.
Removal of pride flags raises questions
FEATURES
Not that I choose favorites, but if I did, this would absolutely be it. I got the idea from a question brought up in one of my classes about the role of libraries and whether they were even still relevant. I know a lot of people who spend a good portion of their time at the library, and I've always found it a welcoming place to read, study, volunteer and make friends, so I decided to write a feature on what libraries do for their communities in the modern day. Few people know about the services they provide other than free access to books and movies, so I wanted to highlight everything that local libraries provide citizens, as well as share the stories of people for whom the library was a safe space. It was also worth acknowledging that our school has a media center that few students use as a library in the traditional sense, so I reached out to our library media specialist and interviewed her in addition to a librarian at my local branch and the students who frequented it.
One for the books
Fighting the system
My friend suggested that I write this article after I asked around for feature ideas. He told me that he'd seen a lot of people struggle with getting interpersonal conflicts resolved by the school, so I did some investigating. As it turned out, this was a real problem, and there was a significant disconnect between the effectiveness of this system as perceived by administration and by the students. A lot of students who had dealt with serious issues like harassment or stalking felt that they weren't being listened to by the school, while administrators felt that they were adequately resolving these conflicts because the students rarely reached out if the issue persisted after school intervention. Not only did this article highlight the system for conflict resolution, it showcased the fact that many struggled with actually reaching a solution.
OPINIONS
Social media is not Satan
In January 2024, the Florida House of Representatives introduced a bill that would ban social media for users under 16 years of age. When I first heard about the bill, I didn't even believe it was real. Although I didn't have any social media at the time, I was more angry at the idea that the state government would restrict something so personal, and make a decision that should be left between parents and children. Though the bill ended up being vetoed, this article still addressed important points about government overreach, and handled the topic of social media in a manner I haven't observed in many other places.
A visual representation of my madness (left). During a meeting with my advisor and Kailey, the editor-in-chief at the time, we wrote out every episode I'd watched on our classroom whiteboard and sorted them into categories.
Trial by (holiday) television
(Copied from introduction)
The holidays are about love? False. The holidays are about sitcom Christmas specials.
Such has always been my philosophy in regards to the winter season, but this year I took my typical viewing to another level. I asked those around me for their takes on the best holiday specials of all time, added in a few of my own, and spent hours on Google searching for “greatest sitcom Christmas episodes” and “sitcoms with holiday specials” and eventually just “sitcoms I haven’t seen already.”
I also set a few limits on the shows I chose: live-action only, watchable with no context, and strictly from series that could be conceivably classified as situational comedies.
Eventually, I had a list of 25 (well, actually 28) episodes that other people thought were the best, and after watching all of them, I condensed them into categories based on my own opinion, which is objectively more correct. ​
This is the longest story ever published on our website, and probably the most fun to write. After spending Thanksgiving break obsessively watching holiday specials and taking extensive notes, I wrote a series of mini reviews that I loved writing almost as much as I love rereading them.
After the murder of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, I noticed a disturbing trend in online spaces: People were obsessing over the killer, Luigi Mangione, almost as if he were a fictional character. Many claimed to believe that the murder was justified because of Thompson's position as a high-ranking official at a healthcare company, but it didn't take much digging to find out what this (primarily female) group actually loved him for: his face. I think that murder is wrong in nearly any context, and murdering someone you don't know just to prove a point and cause fear is terrorism. Simple as that. However, this situation was even worse. Had the killer been unattractive, or even average looking, most of Mangione's fans wouldn't bat an eye. I wanted to highlight this in the story that I wrote, and also bring people back to reality. Thompson and Mangione weren't characters in a movie--they were real people, even if they weren't being viewed that way.
Luigi Mangione is not hot
Antisemitism is no laughing matter
As a Jewish person, I always felt a little bit weird or uncomfortable when my classmates and teammates tried to get me to join them in prayer, or asked why I didn't go to church. But during my sophomore year, I noticed a considerable increase in the amount of overtly antisemitic comments and jokes I heard around campus, and I began writing this article. While I was in the process of making final edits, I heard the news about the initial attack on Israel that began the ongoing Hamas-Israel war, and suddenly antisemitism became a much more visible—and far more sensitive—issue. I shifted the focus to include this whole new type of undisguised antisemitism, and got an extension on the publication date so that I could interview one of the few Jewish teachers at my school, as well as Muslim students who were facing similar prejudices.
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In the years since I wrote and published this article, I've seen antisemitic language become even more prevalent, and I've even seen it emerge in spaces and groups where I used to feel comfortable. I find myself muttering "Please don't drag us into this" more and more as I read news headlines. All that to say, I am still proud of having written this article, and although I didn't know how bad the issue would get, I stand by what I wrote at the time.
SPORTS
When people hear about athletes switching teams, they think of professional sports. However, high school sports transfers are becoming more common by the year, and at our school especially, this is a problem. After hearing a few too many complaints about teams losing high performers or needing extra players to fill in gaps, I did some research and found both a whole lot of rules and a whole lot of stories. This was super interesting. I had a lot of fun researching and writing this story, and I spoke with both coaches and players, and read through guidelines to get an idea of what exactly was allowed in regards to transfers. People without an interest in sports might not usually find this kind of thing intriguing, but for athletes and coaches, this article addressed a large trend that was not often acknowledged by our publication, and I became genuinely invested in learning about both sides of the issue as I was writing about it.
Leaving so soon?
Not for softies
Fun fact: I did not get graded on this story. At the time I wrote it, in the final quarter of my sophomore year, I had plans for all of my required stories, but one of the sports pages in the print issue was completely blank. The sports editor asked me if I would write a softball story, so I went to a game, took some photos and began one of the most stressful writing processes I have ever gone through. The story transformed from a quick brief on one game to a feature-length deep-dive into the entire season so far and what the team had in store next, and then finally it was long enough to take up a whole page. I'm happy with how both the story and the print page turned out, and the softball players were some of the friendliest and most photogenic (this was lucky for me, since I had to take photos at a very odd angle due to the setup of our softball diamond) athletes I have spoken to.
Starting my sophomore year, I began my second season of cross country, but I quickly noticed that running seemed a lot more difficult—for everyone on the team. There turned out to be a reason for this: building pressure in Florida's atmosphere had resulted in a heat wave that caused temperatures to skyrocket. And cross country wasn't the only sport affected. Just about every team I could think of had been canceling practices and taking extra safety precautions due to the excessive heat warnings. While writing this, I interviewed the athletic trainer at our school and researched heat safety for athletes in order to provide students with knowledge about how to avoid and face heat-related illnesses.
