Ten years gone, Part 4
This retrospective on my high school graduation has dragged on for far too long. Soon it will have been 11 years since I graduated, so I need to wrap this up now. (Though it is not like I have written much.)
Ten years ago about now, having spent June and July working for The Daily Iowan — and planting the seedling of doubt about my future prospects as a newspaper journalist — I was whiling away the days before starting classes at Iowa. My sister was about to begin her freshman year at City High, and one day I took her on a tour of the school. She was familiar with the sports and music areas, but did not know anything about the school between the bookends of the auditorium and gyms.
I showed her where the different departments were, where her science and math classes would be, and where all the offices were. I took her into the “dungeon,” down into the cafeteria, and the infamous “C-wing.” I showed her shortcuts and advised her about areas prone to passing time bottlenecks. I bumped into a friend who was painting for the school district, and he may or may not have taken us up to the school’s famous bell tower. The final stop of my tour was more for myself than for my sister: the journalism suite, better known colloquially as the Newslab.
For my junior and, especially, senior year of high school, the Newslab had been my second home. I chilled there before school began, ate lunch there, and stayed there for many long nights during paste-up. In the classroom I attended Jack Kennedy’s final Foundations class. In the lab, with its walls covered by the countless awards given to the newspaper and yearbook, I wrote articles, copyedited stories on the lightboard, and pasted my finished Viewpoints pages on flats sent to the Press-Citizen for printing. It was where my best memories of high school were forged, and where I made my mark on the school — figuratively and literally.
So — my time on the Little Hawk, City High’s student newspaper. No retrospective about my high school career would be complete without writing about it. Because, frankly, it was my high school career. The LH was the only extracurricular activity I participated in. I did not play sports, was not in any clubs, did not play in band or orchestra, and did not sing or dance in any of the seemingly countless school troupes. I attended performances and games, but was only a spectator. During my freshman and sophomore years, I was only a student. As a junior and senior, I was a student, reporter, proofreader, photographer, designer, and editor.
My time on staff, especially as an editor my senior year, made a huge impact on me. Like I said, it was my high school career. I could go deep and write an endless post, starting from the time I knew I wanted to be a LH editor (it was in seventh grade) to when I left, unceremoniously, the final paste-up of my LH career. (I wish now I would have stayed to the end.) Though exciting for me to write, I bet it would be a bore to read. So instead I will try to keep it short.
The final LH of my high school career was published May 18, 2001. The paste-up for that paper was one of the most memorable. Perhaps it’s because we were saluting our class with the annual “Senior Salute” section, or because it was the last issue for our adviser, who would be leaving the school after two years at the helm of the paper. Or perhaps it’s because it was the last paste-up and is the “freshest” in my mind.
I don’t recall anything from Monday or Tuesday, but Wednesday was a scramble to the end (or at least when I left). Not only did a lot of people put off work until the end (as usual), a lot of space needed to be filled with whatever quotes and photos we got from that afternoon’s senior picnic. After the picnic (which I didn’t go to), photos were cropped and placed, guest columns edited (I remember just butchering some poor girl’s column because it was way too long), and pages redesigned. It was a herculean effort, though a tad sloppy. Having pasted my Viewpoints section, I commandeered pages being edited by others; they were falling behind, needing guidance, or completely clueless, so I courteously stepped in to help.
Around nine o’clock, a few hours before our midnight deadline, when we had to be out of the school for the night, a few editors and I were reveling in an almost completed issue. That’s when I realized I had never seen page 12. I never saw it once on the lightboard for copyediting and had no clue whose it was. I looked at the page ladder and saw it was assigned to the editor of the school’s arts magazine. I approached her as she sat at her computer, studying a printout of the page I had never seen. I took a look. It was a mess and far from being polished; the main graphic was unfinished and the main story had been read by no one. “Get up,” I said. “This is my page now.” After a minute I realized the dimensions of the page were wrong; she had been working on it at home using an outdated version of PageMaker her brother copied from a Newlab computer two years earlier. Somehow I transferred everything to my computer via the famous G-drive and pasted everything into the proper template. After placing pictures into an impromptu collage, inserting sidebar information to fill whitespace, and getting the text columns balanced, I printed the page and yelled for someone to proof it immediately. Ten minutes later I got the corrections back, proofed the page myself, and printed it out on “blue back” for pasting on the flat.
After that, I was done. That was it. I’d had it. It was eleven o’clock and I left. While walking out of the lab, I saw a group of people huddled around one of the computers at the sports island. I had no clue what was going on and did not care to find out. I was getting out of there. I do not remember whether or not I met the P-C delivery guy that Friday morning, at the butt crack of dawn, to load papers from his van into the big, gray bin. (Or was it blue?) I don’t remember if I untied the bundles and stacked them against the columns in the main foyer as I did for most of the other issues. The last memory I have of that issue is seeing the group huddled around the sports computer as I walked out the door.
I worked on the LH during what could be seen as a watershed era for the newspaper. During Jack Kennedy’s long reign as adviser, the LH and City High’s yearbook, the Red and White, became the standard bearers of high school journalism; they became teaching tools for schools across the country and amassed tons of national awards, including the coveted Pacemaker, the high school Pulitzer Prize. When Kennedy — who everyone referred to informally as Jack — resigned as adviser at the end of my sophomore year to become the assistant principal, everyone assumed the paper would fall from its pedestal. I think it did, but not until after I graduated. (Of course, I am a little biased.)
Bobblehead and I like to refer to our class of editors as “The Dream Team.” Much like the real Dream Team, we were an ensemble of talented individuals who contributed to the paper in our own way. The results made Kennedy, reading the paper in his comfy administrative office, jealous. He routinely wrote us glowing letters, which I like to think were sincere. We raked in individual awards and the paper placed high at each of two journalism conferences.
The editors before us won a Pacemaker (which we technically won, too, since we were on staff), so from a hardware standpoint the fall from grace would have started with us. We were sure it would not; we assumed we were a lock to earn another Pacemaker. However, when the awards for 2000-01 were handed out that fall, long after we graduated, the LH was not among the winners. It was not even a finalist.
I remember being shocked. I was not big into awards, but I wanted that Pacemaker, wanted one of those plaques hanging in the lab recognizing our hard work. I wanted to make one of those traditional (pathetic, in my eyes) former-editor visits to the lab during paste-up to hold that prize high like so many of my classmates did with rivalry and state championship trophies. (A little corny, I agree, but I still wanted to do it.) But it was not to be. Why? Apparently because the organizations sponsoring the award have a policy of not awarding the same paper five Pacemakers in a row. Having won four straight Pacemakers, we unfortunately fell on that fifth year. For me it was an odd, and maybe ironic, coincidence: the past LH issues I admired most, those from 1995-96, were also not awarded a Pacemaker for the same reason — apparently.
Did we deserve that Pacemaker? I think we did. Our content and writing were stellar. However, an emphasis on design was lacking. How much of a factor that played I will never know, but if we were not going to be considered anyway it did not matter. I think the LH’s from ’95-’96 were the best designed papers I had ever seen, and they had the same fate. Perhaps I could write the folks at NSPA just to ask, to put to bed my curiosity.
Since then the LH has fallen hard from its pedestal. Every year I made sure to get an issue or two, and every year it got worse and worse. Now it seems like just another high school newspaper. The last year it won a Pacemaker was 1999-2000 — my junior year.
Though I think the LH’s downfall happened after I graduated, I think the roots can be traced to my two years on staff. The emphasis on design eroded, practices such as group brainstorming and copy-read-around were nonexistent after the first issue my junior year, and there was no more fear of being embarrassed by our adviser at issue review sessions, which may have been a positive change. (One motivating factor from the Kennedy area I heard about was how badly he embarrassed writers and editors for their mistakes.) There was not a lot of collaboration between editors and aspiring-editors; there was no training, transfer of knowledge, or feeling of mentorship. I cannot vouch for what happened after I graduated, but I think the things we did and did not do set a bad precedent.
After years of shameful mediocrity, however, things seem to be looking up once again. A new adviser was brought in a few years ago, and the 2011 LH was a finalist for the Online Pacemaker.
So, this post became exactly what I did not want it to: a rant tinged with nostalgia. But such are the emotions I feel about the LH and my time on it. I will never forget it; the Newslab and LH will forever have a special place in my heart.
For years I have seriously thought about getting my teaching licensure and becoming the LH adviser, to try leading the paper back to the top. Will I do it? Could I do it? Now is not a good time to become a teacher, so maybe. Maybe.
Ten years ago about now, having spent June and July working for The Daily Iowan — and planting the seedling of doubt about my future prospects as a newspaper journalist — I was whiling away the days before starting classes at Iowa. My sister was about to begin her freshman year at City High, and one day I took her on a tour of the school. She was familiar with the sports and music areas, but did not know anything about the school between the bookends of the auditorium and gyms.
I showed her where the different departments were, where her science and math classes would be, and where all the offices were. I took her into the “dungeon,” down into the cafeteria, and the infamous “C-wing.” I showed her shortcuts and advised her about areas prone to passing time bottlenecks. I bumped into a friend who was painting for the school district, and he may or may not have taken us up to the school’s famous bell tower. The final stop of my tour was more for myself than for my sister: the journalism suite, better known colloquially as the Newslab.
For my junior and, especially, senior year of high school, the Newslab had been my second home. I chilled there before school began, ate lunch there, and stayed there for many long nights during paste-up. In the classroom I attended Jack Kennedy’s final Foundations class. In the lab, with its walls covered by the countless awards given to the newspaper and yearbook, I wrote articles, copyedited stories on the lightboard, and pasted my finished Viewpoints pages on flats sent to the Press-Citizen for printing. It was where my best memories of high school were forged, and where I made my mark on the school — figuratively and literally.
So — my time on the Little Hawk, City High’s student newspaper. No retrospective about my high school career would be complete without writing about it. Because, frankly, it was my high school career. The LH was the only extracurricular activity I participated in. I did not play sports, was not in any clubs, did not play in band or orchestra, and did not sing or dance in any of the seemingly countless school troupes. I attended performances and games, but was only a spectator. During my freshman and sophomore years, I was only a student. As a junior and senior, I was a student, reporter, proofreader, photographer, designer, and editor.
My time on staff, especially as an editor my senior year, made a huge impact on me. Like I said, it was my high school career. I could go deep and write an endless post, starting from the time I knew I wanted to be a LH editor (it was in seventh grade) to when I left, unceremoniously, the final paste-up of my LH career. (I wish now I would have stayed to the end.) Though exciting for me to write, I bet it would be a bore to read. So instead I will try to keep it short.
The final LH of my high school career was published May 18, 2001. The paste-up for that paper was one of the most memorable. Perhaps it’s because we were saluting our class with the annual “Senior Salute” section, or because it was the last issue for our adviser, who would be leaving the school after two years at the helm of the paper. Or perhaps it’s because it was the last paste-up and is the “freshest” in my mind.
I don’t recall anything from Monday or Tuesday, but Wednesday was a scramble to the end (or at least when I left). Not only did a lot of people put off work until the end (as usual), a lot of space needed to be filled with whatever quotes and photos we got from that afternoon’s senior picnic. After the picnic (which I didn’t go to), photos were cropped and placed, guest columns edited (I remember just butchering some poor girl’s column because it was way too long), and pages redesigned. It was a herculean effort, though a tad sloppy. Having pasted my Viewpoints section, I commandeered pages being edited by others; they were falling behind, needing guidance, or completely clueless, so I courteously stepped in to help.
Around nine o’clock, a few hours before our midnight deadline, when we had to be out of the school for the night, a few editors and I were reveling in an almost completed issue. That’s when I realized I had never seen page 12. I never saw it once on the lightboard for copyediting and had no clue whose it was. I looked at the page ladder and saw it was assigned to the editor of the school’s arts magazine. I approached her as she sat at her computer, studying a printout of the page I had never seen. I took a look. It was a mess and far from being polished; the main graphic was unfinished and the main story had been read by no one. “Get up,” I said. “This is my page now.” After a minute I realized the dimensions of the page were wrong; she had been working on it at home using an outdated version of PageMaker her brother copied from a Newlab computer two years earlier. Somehow I transferred everything to my computer via the famous G-drive and pasted everything into the proper template. After placing pictures into an impromptu collage, inserting sidebar information to fill whitespace, and getting the text columns balanced, I printed the page and yelled for someone to proof it immediately. Ten minutes later I got the corrections back, proofed the page myself, and printed it out on “blue back” for pasting on the flat.
After that, I was done. That was it. I’d had it. It was eleven o’clock and I left. While walking out of the lab, I saw a group of people huddled around one of the computers at the sports island. I had no clue what was going on and did not care to find out. I was getting out of there. I do not remember whether or not I met the P-C delivery guy that Friday morning, at the butt crack of dawn, to load papers from his van into the big, gray bin. (Or was it blue?) I don’t remember if I untied the bundles and stacked them against the columns in the main foyer as I did for most of the other issues. The last memory I have of that issue is seeing the group huddled around the sports computer as I walked out the door.
I worked on the LH during what could be seen as a watershed era for the newspaper. During Jack Kennedy’s long reign as adviser, the LH and City High’s yearbook, the Red and White, became the standard bearers of high school journalism; they became teaching tools for schools across the country and amassed tons of national awards, including the coveted Pacemaker, the high school Pulitzer Prize. When Kennedy — who everyone referred to informally as Jack — resigned as adviser at the end of my sophomore year to become the assistant principal, everyone assumed the paper would fall from its pedestal. I think it did, but not until after I graduated. (Of course, I am a little biased.)
Bobblehead and I like to refer to our class of editors as “The Dream Team.” Much like the real Dream Team, we were an ensemble of talented individuals who contributed to the paper in our own way. The results made Kennedy, reading the paper in his comfy administrative office, jealous. He routinely wrote us glowing letters, which I like to think were sincere. We raked in individual awards and the paper placed high at each of two journalism conferences.
The editors before us won a Pacemaker (which we technically won, too, since we were on staff), so from a hardware standpoint the fall from grace would have started with us. We were sure it would not; we assumed we were a lock to earn another Pacemaker. However, when the awards for 2000-01 were handed out that fall, long after we graduated, the LH was not among the winners. It was not even a finalist.
I remember being shocked. I was not big into awards, but I wanted that Pacemaker, wanted one of those plaques hanging in the lab recognizing our hard work. I wanted to make one of those traditional (pathetic, in my eyes) former-editor visits to the lab during paste-up to hold that prize high like so many of my classmates did with rivalry and state championship trophies. (A little corny, I agree, but I still wanted to do it.) But it was not to be. Why? Apparently because the organizations sponsoring the award have a policy of not awarding the same paper five Pacemakers in a row. Having won four straight Pacemakers, we unfortunately fell on that fifth year. For me it was an odd, and maybe ironic, coincidence: the past LH issues I admired most, those from 1995-96, were also not awarded a Pacemaker for the same reason — apparently.
Did we deserve that Pacemaker? I think we did. Our content and writing were stellar. However, an emphasis on design was lacking. How much of a factor that played I will never know, but if we were not going to be considered anyway it did not matter. I think the LH’s from ’95-’96 were the best designed papers I had ever seen, and they had the same fate. Perhaps I could write the folks at NSPA just to ask, to put to bed my curiosity.
Since then the LH has fallen hard from its pedestal. Every year I made sure to get an issue or two, and every year it got worse and worse. Now it seems like just another high school newspaper. The last year it won a Pacemaker was 1999-2000 — my junior year.
Though I think the LH’s downfall happened after I graduated, I think the roots can be traced to my two years on staff. The emphasis on design eroded, practices such as group brainstorming and copy-read-around were nonexistent after the first issue my junior year, and there was no more fear of being embarrassed by our adviser at issue review sessions, which may have been a positive change. (One motivating factor from the Kennedy area I heard about was how badly he embarrassed writers and editors for their mistakes.) There was not a lot of collaboration between editors and aspiring-editors; there was no training, transfer of knowledge, or feeling of mentorship. I cannot vouch for what happened after I graduated, but I think the things we did and did not do set a bad precedent.
After years of shameful mediocrity, however, things seem to be looking up once again. A new adviser was brought in a few years ago, and the 2011 LH was a finalist for the Online Pacemaker.
So, this post became exactly what I did not want it to: a rant tinged with nostalgia. But such are the emotions I feel about the LH and my time on it. I will never forget it; the Newslab and LH will forever have a special place in my heart.
For years I have seriously thought about getting my teaching licensure and becoming the LH adviser, to try leading the paper back to the top. Will I do it? Could I do it? Now is not a good time to become a teacher, so maybe. Maybe.
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