School scribes fret program’s fate
Published 12:00 am Saturday, December 1, 2001
It’s 4 p.
Saturday, December 01, 2001
It’s 4 p.m. on Friday, but a handful of students are in no hurry to get out of school. The AhLaHaSa office is still half full of staffers turning in rolls of film or filing their stories for the day.
For these students, the school newsmagazine is more than a class.
&uot;I personally know people who every day say, ‘Man, you’re so lucky to be on AhLaHaSa,’&uot; said junior sports editor Jake McClaskey. &uot;And they probably should be.&uot;
So many students are interested in the school’s journalism program that instructor Liz Keeling must turn students away every semester; they must apply to be on the AhLaHaSa.
About 40 juniors and seniors make up the staff. The sophomore journalism class, which prepares students for work at the AhLaHaSa, has 100 students divided among three sections over the course of the year.
&uot;From last year to this year, the journalism program doubled,&uot; Keeling said. &uot;The interest is definitely there.&uot;
The journalism program, however, may be in jeopardy. Since the day the levy referendum failed, Keeling has been up front with her classes about the possibility of the school board cutting the program.
&uot;Some (students) are concerned about me, and me losing my job, because I’m non-tenured staff,&uot; Keeling said. &uot;I’m not really concerned about my job, because I can always go somewhere and do something else. But it really makes me ill to think that a program like this could be cut.&uot;
The journalism classes do more than keep students interested in school, Keeling said. The students continue to push for new heights of achievement. This year, they brought home four nationwide awards from the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA). The staff as a whole garnered seventh place in Best of Show. The school’s literary magazine got sixth place.
Two individuals placed in the top ten: Sarah Frydenlund took first place for newsmagazine page design, and Leah Lohse won second place in the feature writing category for a story on bulemia.
It’s not the first year the staff has placed highly. In fact, the publication regularly appears in the top ten and has for years.
&uot;People all over the country and all over the world know about Albert Lea because of the AhLaHaSa,&uot; Keeling said.
Keeling says she continues to push for more from the staff. After learning a new story exercise at the NSPA conference in Boston, she put it to work in the classroom Friday. The students worked on day-long projects about prejudice; each drew a subject out of a hat – race, gender, socioeconomic – and interviewed others about whether they’ve seen that kind of discrimination. The stories they write will be part of a special issue in February.
If the school cuts its journalism programs, the AhLaHaSa will continue, but strictly as an after-school activity on the students’ own time.
&uot;I’m afraid the AhLaHaSa staff won’t be able to continue the quality of journalism they are reaching right now,&uot; Keeling said.
Many students would end up with conflicts between the newsmagazine and other after-school activities like music, sports or jobs. &uot;Most of my kids are the kinds of kids who are involved in those kinds of things,&uot; Keeling said.
Junior Anne McGinnis, a first-year staff member, said she’s worried about the program’s future.
&uot;I think they’ll be missing a lot,&uot; she said. &uot;This is something a lot of us look forward to in a day.&uot;
McClaskey said the program has helped him learn what journalism is about. Thanks to Keeling’s recommendation, he’s even landed a job as a part-time sportswriter for the Tribune.
&uot;Getting paid to do something you like is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time,&uot; he said.