High School Journalism Institute » bettonville http://hsji.org Hosted at the Indiana University School of Journalism Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:36:24 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 The Printing Crusade http://hsji.org/student-work/the-printing-crusade/ http://hsji.org/student-work/the-printing-crusade/#comments Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:36:46 +0000 Matt Bettonville, St. Louis University High School http://hsji.org/?p=708 Pardon the dramatic title, but the last two weeks have felt like a battle.

Yesterday, the Prep News, my school’s student newspaper, printed on tabloid-sized newsprint for the first time since the 1960s. The Prep News has a long tradition of covering everything. Since we are a weekly, we get every little detail into news articles, features, and sports updates and offer a strong opinion section each week. But our 8.5" x 11" printer paper had our newspaper looking like a newsletter. As of this week, style has finally matched substance.

The battle started over the summer when I started driving the idea by contacting printing companies. The sales guy at the press we eventually decided to use said he had never coordinated with a student editor before and that it was always the adviser, but he agreed to work with me. I spent two weeks over the summer learning what "30# Standard News 35" Roll White stock" means and working with our school business office to prepare a marginal cost report for our administration. Then we had to redo our whole layout for larger dimensions.

Once we finally got approval, the details all fell on me. This week alone, I spent around 30 hours working on the paper, partly because I decided to tackle an extensive news feature on student use of computer technology as well. But every where, when, and how about printing came to me and required meetings with the paper staff and administrators.

And it was all worth it.

Yesterday’s distribution was possibly the most gratifying day I’ve had yet in journalism. I received no less than 150 personal congratulations, as well as open applause in three different classes, a discussion of how that week’s paper related to the Bible in my theology class, and a personal e-mail from the school president calling it a "historic endeavor."

The only complaint was that the new format was too noticeable to read during class without a teacher seeing. This was actually encouraging: people were really reading the paper. On top of the format compliments, I received more comments on content this week than I ever have before. The more attractive layout made more people read. I guess substance needs style.

I don’t think I can possibly express how it feels to put so many hours into a long-term project and then get to walk down the halls during homeroom to see every face in every classroom hidden behind the gray paper bearing the masthead I designed and the article I composed.

I think this week, we won the battle.
 
 
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