Start the presses

In a cramped office tucked way, way in the back of The Spokesman-Review newsroom, a group of high school students is making a newspaper.

Their own newspaper.

They’ve named the paper. They’ve chosen, written and edited the stories. They’ve taken the photographs and learned how to put all of the pieces on the page.

On Wednesday, nearly 30,000 copies of the Vox will be printed and distributed at Spokane County high schools and in news boxes around the city.

“Featuring accurate and balanced reporting, the Vox will provide an often forgotten point of view – that of the nation’s future,” editor-in-chief Tyler Slauson, a 17-year-old senior at Lewis and Clark High School, writes in his inaugural column.

The first issue of the monthly newspaper will include a wide range of stories, from music and theater reviews to an opinion column from a Jordanian exchange student to a sports feature about bowling.

“I think we have a good balance,” says Lillian Dubiel, the paper’s opinion editor and a 17-year-old senior at LC.

The Vox has been long in the making.

Well before these student journalists ever gathered, managers at The Spokesman-Review had been looking for ways to involve young people in the newspaper. For years, the paper ran a weekly section called Our Generation. That section, written by area high school students and edited by newspaper staff, folded in 2004.

But the Vox is much different from Our Generation. It is completely written and edited by students, under the direction of Erin Daniels, a former high school journalism teacher who is the Vox’s adviser. Plus, the Vox will not be distributed with The Spokesman-Review.

“The content is really aimed at a more youthful audience,” Spokesman-Review editor Steve Smith says. “It doesn’t blend well in the main paper.”

Smith also wanted to find a way to get young people interested in journalism, at a time when many high schools were cutting newspaper programs.

“The real wrinkle that makes this a little different is the education component,” Smith says. “We’re trying to train journalists.”

In addition to teaching young people how to be reporters and writers, there’s hope that both working on and reading the Vox will encourage teens to become lifelong newspaper readers. A survey by the Newspaper Association of America found that 75 percent of young adults who read teen sections growing up currently read their local paper at least once a week. By contrast, 44 percent of those who did not read teen sections are now regular paper readers.

“These guys will read the paper all their life,” Daniels says.

Over the summer, some 160 students met at The Spokesman-Review to talk about what they would like to see in a teen publication. About 100 of those young people picked up applications for the Vox. The paper now has a staff of about 60, with a core group of 14 editors, Daniels says.

Before work started on the first issue of the Vox, Daniels led the teenage staff through a month of workshops covering journalism basics. And starting in January, she will teach an online journalism class through Spokane Virtual Learning, a program of Web-based courses that’s part of Spokane Public Schools.

“They seem to feel so fortunate they get to be a part of it,” Daniels says. “The kids are really excited they get to be a part of something so much bigger than themselves. They realize it”s a huge privilege and responsibility.”

And a lot of work, too.

As the deadline to go to press approaches, students have been in the newsroom every day after school. They’ve been editing stories, designing pages and writing headlines.

“Editing a large mass of stories is a lot harder than you’d think at first,” says Robert Weigle, a 16-year-old junior at LC who’s one of the paper’s arts and entertainment editors. “Working with writers who have little to no experience is challenging.”

The students have picked up some lessons in tact, too.

“I’ve had to learn how to politely criticize my writers,” Dubiel says.

On a recent day, several editors gathered in the cramped back room, poring over pages to be edited. Spokesman-Review designer Lacey Krause worked closely with them, showing them how to use the newspaper design program and helping them get stories and headlines to fit on each page.

“I need headline inspiration,” a copy editor said, with a red pen at the ready.

Joshua Millet, the sports editor and a senior at Ferris High School, scanned the Associated Press wire to find a story to fill out his page.

Millet, 17, who wants to be a sports writer, says working on the Vox has been “a good learning experience.”

By the next issue, he would like to have more stories about area high school sports, he says.

He wants his peers to take the time to read the paper.

“I hope they enjoy it,” Millet says. “I hope they get something out of it.”

In the immediate future, The Spokesman-Review advertising staff will sell ads for the Vox, Smith says. At some point, he would like the teens to sell advertising for their own publication.

Smith also hopes the Vox will have its Web site running by the time the January issue comes out.

Both Smith and Daniels expect the students will have even more autonomy as they get more experience putting out the Vox.

“I know there will come a time the students put something in the paper that will offend some people,” Smith says, adding that there is no subject he would prohibit the students from writing about.

At a meeting of Vox editors a few days before the paper went to press, Daniels told them she wants them to get braver with story topics with each issue.

“We expect every paper to get progressively better,” she says.