GILROY
– The quality of
”
garlic town
”
journalism appears to be on the upswing
– at least on the amateur level, that is.
GILROY – The quality of “garlic town” journalism appears to be on the upswing – at least on the amateur level, that is.
Gilroy High School’s newspaper, The Free Press, earned the highest ranking the American Scholastic Press Association gives to high school newspapers. Last week, the association announced that The Free Press was one of 33 other high schools across America whose publications merited top recognition for coverage, page design, art, advertising, editing and creativity, among other things.
The Free Press was judged in the category for schools with enrollments from 1,701 to 2,500. Last year, in the same category, The Free Press earned the association’s second highest ranking.
“I think the feedback we received last year from the judges helped us improve this year,” advisor Elizabeth Baker-Chapman said. “We’re proud of what we did, and we have some good feedback we can use for next year.”
Baker-Chapman, a former public relations specialist and editor-in-chief of the Gavilan College Rambler, is in her second year at Gilroy High. When Baker-Chapman became the school’s journalism teacher, students who helped publish The Free Press did it as an extra-curricular activity.
“It wasn’t really legitimate beforehand,” said GHS senior Megan Stevens, the paper’s editor-in-chief the past two years. “Making it a class definitely made us take it more seriously. At one point, our humor page became three pages long.”
Not anymore. The Free Press is now an issues-oriented publication with an opinion page and stories on controversial topics, from a recent war protest that triggered a student walkout to the current controversy over weighted grades.
“We have a lot of support from our administration,” Stevens said. “I couldn’t believe it when I was at a conference and students were telling me that their principal has to approve the paper. I think they gave us that freedom because they saw we we’re taking it seriously.”
Roughly 25 students make up the staff of the bi-monthly publication, a significant increase from when it was about a 10-member club. Also increasing is the amount of buzz the paper creates on campus.
Stevens recalls the first time The Free Press received a letter to the editor after an issue that ran last year. This year, the bi-monthly paper gets three to four letters to the editor per edition, Stevens said.
“I think that was a definite indicator for us,” Stevens said.
“I always tell (the editorial staff) that they are the voice of the school and I think they take it seriously,” Baker-Chapman said.
