Ryan Sewell ’24
Student-run newspapers not only deliver timely and relevant information to a school community, but they also provide an avenue for students to improve their journalistic writing skills and connect with an array of individuals through their work. EA’s newspaper, The Scholium, is only one such example — one that parallels the many student-run newspapers of peer schools such as The Haverford School, the Academy of Notre Dame de Namur, or The Baldwin School
Student-run publications are a source for students and faculty to learn about what events are happening in their local communities while sharing different perspectives. Khoa Tran ’24 believes that student publications “represent the interests of the student body and are entertaining for people to read. I think it can be a good way for people to share their opinions.”
Gautam Ketkar ’24 adds, “I believe that student publications really offer an opportunity for students to publish their insightful pieces of work, and provide an important lesson: if you want to publish something later in the real world, it is important to learn these things at school.”
Student-run newspapers are staples at both the high school and college levels, but they can vary in terms of shape and size. For example, Haverford’s student newspaper, The Index, is published nine times per year, whereas Notre Dame’s The Gates and Baldwin’s The Hourglass are only published four or five times. EA’s The Scholium publishes eight times per year. In regard to staff size, most publications have an editorial staff ranging from 10-20 students, and variable amounts of writers.
Like The Scholium, The Hourglass, and The Index are available both in-print and online, whereas The Gates is only published online in an electronic newspaper format. Within the pages themselves, many of the papers share similar sections such as News, Features, Arts, Sports and opinion sections. However, each paper has its own unique features that reflect the distinctive styles of each school and editorial staff.
For The Hourglass, its speciality is its “freeform” and dynamic writer-oriented design. Rather than being driven by structural demands or staff ideas, The Hourglass’s open pitch meetings encourage each writer to address their interests in their articles. Co-Editor-in-Chief Izzy Thompson ’23 explains, “One of our goals with the newspaper is to amplify student voices, so we do a lot of outreach to the broader community to try and get people besides just our regular staff writers to come in and write for us. When somebody who is not usually a staff writer gets their article published, they are really excited about it and get all their friends to read it.”
Prioritizing the specific journalistic interests of writers over formatting demands may lead to sections disproportionate in size, yet Design Heads, or editors, provide the necessary flexibility for the plan to work. For every edition, they create a unique page, customized for the articles which it contains.
The Gates is characterized by its student recommendations section. Editor-in-Chief Katie Onderdonk ’23 explains that the staff “will do themes for the season reviews, and we have fashion and trending reviews. The food reviews are also super popular because students love to read about those.” She adds that “We just had one about Azie on Main where students went to the restaurant and reviewed their food. I wrote one last year comparing five pumpkin spice lattes in the area.”
For Joey Kauffman ’23, Editor-in-Chief of The Index, leading Haverford’s student newspaper is participating in a moment of history. The Index’s storied history dates back “over 100 years ago” close to the school’s founding. “We’re telling the story of our community, and newspapers are the first draft of history. Even now, I’ll go back and look at The Index from 2010, and it gives me a snapshot of the school at that time. I think the duty of The Index is to provide a snapshot of the community at that specific time, and an equitable snapshot that isn’t just covering the most visible people, but really digging into the community and looking at issues that are facing in the community,” Kauffman says.
Photo courtesy of thsindex.org
The Hourglass certainly captures an amalgamation of interests through its wide ranging articles. Thompson comments, “While a lot of the articles can be lighthearted, there are definitely articles in every issue that bring awareness to Baldwin-specific issues, and we really encourage our writers to dive into their issues or thoughts about Baldwin.”
While many publications hope to enact change within their school community, the obstacle of censorship can sometimes stand in the way. For some schools, this provides little to no issues. Kauffman informs, “We have two wonderful faculty advisors and they’re the only adults that look over the paper before it’s printed. I think there really is no censorship on it. We just want to be responsible about what we publish and know that if we are irresponsible about it, we’ll get complaints back.”
Makenna Walko ’23, Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Hourglass, has a similar experience, explaining that “not everything is read by our principal, but our staff advisor reads everything and more controversial articles go to the head of the department, or dean of students. For the most part, I think we have a lot of independence for what we are allowed to print, but we are still funded by the school so at the end of the day we still have to answer to them.”
Yet, this is not necessarily the case for The Gates. Like The Scholium, which is always reviewed by Michael Letts, Head of Upper School, every edition of The Gates is reviewed by Notre Dame’s principal before release. “Sometimes, Notre Dame is overly defensive about what gets published about the administration,” Onderdonk comments.
Despite the challenges faced in order to publish articles, many students have had positive experiences through their time working on their respective papers. Onderdonk explains that she has enjoyed “giving the girls as much of a voice as they can have,” adding that “I know teacher-wise, a lot of them just love reading from a student’s perspective and really enjoy it when it’s true student work.”
Ketkar concludes, “Writing for Scholium has been a fun and new experience because I had never written about news, especially about the things in our EA community. It’s been a good way to improve my writing ability, improve listening skills when I’m interviewing people, and working with others to craft a story.”