The deadline looms like the sharp, shiny blade of a guillotine
in the Baler newsroom last week.
Hollister – The deadline looms like the sharp, shiny blade of a guillotine in the Baler newsroom last week.
San Benito High School’s student journalists sit squinting at computer screens in their campus newsroom while they finish stories, make last minute edits and put together the next issue of the Baler newspaper.
Besides technological advancements, it’s the same scene that has played out again and again at SBHS for more than 60 years as class after class of students have devoted their time and effort to tell the high school’s news to their peers and residents of San Benito County.
“Our newspaper is really important because we have such a huge (student) population,” said Editor In Chief Erica Sanchez, senior. “We’re putting it out there.”
Putting it out there – which the students ultimately do by delivering wagon-loads of the finished product to every classroom – each month is the last of many steps that student journalists go through. The first is learning: how to find the news, how to frame it and how to write it. Aside from improving the writing and editing skills, students learn lessons of free speech, ethics and accuracy. In addition to being available at SBHS each month, the Baler is sent out to more than 10 thousand homes across the city.
Classroom discussions range from the importance of active verbs to the power and responsibility of the press.
It’s a lesson Baler adviser Kathleen Yager doesn’t take lightly.
“I think the press and the power it has to do good and bring things to the forefront is something students don’t understand,” Yager said. “That’s a lot of what I focus on.”
Yager, who’s been writing for newspapers for years, earned a bachelors degree in human biology from Stanford University and then attended Yale School of Medicine and received a masters degree in Public Health with a focus on communication. But she received most of her writing experience from several years of working in the advertising industry, creating ads for huge corporations like Proctor & Gamble and General Foods.
The newspaper itself, which takes students more than 10 hours of class time per month to produce, runs six pages with news, campus life, opinion, sports and arts sections. There are also pieces written in Spanish and French.
“I like the hectic pace, it keeps me on track,” said Opinions Editor Katie Corotto, junior, who may study journalism in college. “I love to write, I think this is one of the better ways of doing it. We’re able to give information to the public that it wouldn’t otherwise have.”
One opinion that Corotto wrote about the disorganization she saw with the school’s counseling department raised the ire of administration. The school’s brass demanded she write an apology.
She didn’t.
“If they have a problem with it, they can’t do anything,” Corotto said. “It’s already printed. They can just complain afterwards.”
Though the conflict was an isolated event, Yager said administrators and other adults often don’t respect students or their rights.
“I can’t get adults to treat young people with respect,” she said, adding that the situation has improved during the year.
“Do I want (students) to be respectful? Absolutely,” Yager said. “But it’s (the students’) experience and they get to talk about it.”
Even students with no interest in pursuing a journalism career gain a lot from their newspaper experience.
Much of what Yager teaches her students transcends journalism. They are skills for professional life.
Sanchez, who eventually wants to go into the biomedical field, said that her time as editor in chief of the Baler has taught her leadership skills.
“I assign stories, edit and help writers,” she said. “I think these will help me in the future.”
Arts and Entertainment Editor Kristen Anderson, a senior, said that her time on the paper has made it easier for her to approach people and talk to them.
Above all else, Yager stresses the importance of quality and starting a project and seeing it through from concept to completion, “To hold themselves accountable. That function doesn’t matter if it’s a newspaper or a mechanic,” she said.
Luke Roney covers education and agriculture for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 335 or at [email protected]
