“Portrait of a Graduate,” embraced by 26 states, describes essential skills that high school students should master, including thinking critically, communicating clearly and engaging as citizens. As school districts nationwide grapple with this new vision of what it means to earn a diploma, one of the best places for students to practice those skills may already exist within their classroom walls: the school newsroom.
Unfortunately, student newspapers are increasingly rare. A national study found that fewer than half of high schools had student newspapers in 2021, down from almost two-thirds a decade earlier. The situation is even worse in New York City, the so-called media capital of the world, which must fully implement its “Portrait of a Graduate” framework by the 2029-30 school year. A 2022 survey found only 27% of the city’s 400-plus public high schools had a student newspaper — and that number was even lower among schools serving high-poverty communities and those with the lowest graduation rates.
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For five years, the nonprofit I lead, Press Pass NYC, has been addressing this gap by training teachers to advise student-led news teams, both online and in print. We’ve partnered with more than 40 schools across the city, launching brand-new news teams or revitalizing those that may have closed or had trouble getting off the ground.
Because newspapers are no longer so visible or easily obtained as they were when New Yorkers used to leave them on buses and subways, many teens have never seen one until joining a news team. I realized this when I visited schools to watch how the teachers and students are working together. I got a few bewildered looks when I asked some students what kind of artwork or photo they thought should go with their articles. But as a former reporter, I was thrilled to see how much they love journalism when they realize what they can do with it.
Middle and high school students spent last year writing about controversial new policies like the city’s school phone ban. At one school in Chinatown, an editorial against the ban revealed that the school didn’t have enough laptops and tablets for students to use during class. A student at a Queens high school told me how interviewing people for an article on immigration taught him that writing a news article is different from an opinion piece. “ This is this person’s life, this is their story and you’re listening and you’re resonating,” he explained, with reverence.
A Bronx River High School student, Lathania Williams, won a George Polk Award for teen journalism for her report on the impact of immigration enforcement on her community. “I didn’t know my voice could reach that far, or that I had power in my writing,” she said. The news team at a school in Brooklyn interviewed an assistant principal to address a rumor that a school lockdown had been caused by immigration enforcement agents (it wasn’t). One student who works on the publication said the article, “let people know what actually really happened instead of the lie or the rumor.”
At a time when 84% of U.S. teens have a negative view of journalism, student newsrooms create a source of accurate local news, showing the whole school community the difference between journalism and the unvetted information kids get from social media. In the process, students learn through a collaborative workplace driven by a shared mission with deadlines and standards — the same type of skills “Portrait of a Graduate” standards will be looking for.
Starting a student newsroom is far more complicated than simply finding a teacher willing to advise one. An effective adviser must understand journalistic ethics, interview skills, audience engagement, newsroom management and the legal and editorial responsibilities that come with student journalism. Those professional skills cannot be acquired through a weekend workshop. And while artificial intelligence can help a student brainstorm questions or polish a headline, it can’t substitute for an adviser who knows when a source needs to be corroborated, when publishing could put a student at risk or when an administrator is improperly trying to influence editorial decisions.
Building those skills requires sustained professional development, practice and support. My colleague Lara Bergen, who founded Press Pass NYC five years ago, learned this the hard way. A former teacher, she had started a student newspaper at her New York City public high school and was thrilled to see how well it engaged her students. But she had zero training in journalism, and that limited what she could accomplish. Her solution was to create a three-year, in-depth Journalism Adviser Fellowship for teachers, a cohort model where teachers learn together from experienced journalism educators.
This type of training is essential for a school-based newsroom to last. Unlike core subjects, very few states license teachers specifically to teach journalism. In most places, including New York, the subject is folded into the English Language Arts curriculum, which means an ELA teacher can get handed a newspaper or yearbook to advise with no real journalism training. Because requirements differ widely by location, the Journalism Education Association offers a Certified Journalism Educator designation for teachers to prove they are highly qualified.
For student journalism to help prepare the next generation of citizens, schools have to stop treating the person running the newsroom as just another teacher with room in his or her schedule. Journalism advising deserves professional preparation and ongoing support, and schools must treat advisers with the same respect as any other educator. That means building journalism into teacher credentialing, funding the sustained training that advising requires and counting the work of a student newsroom as evidence that a graduate can think critically, communicate clearly and engage as a citizen.