Student Press Day in D.C. p.

By: Debra Gersh

IT WAS A sunny, warm May day, so it was not surprising that a few high school students with spring fever were skipping classes.
Many more, however, eagerly attended their lessons, offered by some of the Washington, D.C. area's top journalists.
The classes were part of the first Student Press Day in the District of Columbia, an event designed to give student journalists and their advisers in-depth lessons about the profession.
In the District of Columbia, 18 senior high schools have a student newspaper that appears at least once a year ? many American cities cannot make that claim.
Those schools, however, must share an ever-shrinking pool of $18,000 allotted them by the school system, according to Washington Post metro reporter Retha Hill. That $1,000 per paper allows for about four issues per school year, with no money left over for supplies such as film and journalism textbooks.
In addition, some of the newspaper advisers are English teachers who have no journalism experience and must take on the responsibility in addition to their full class load and often produce the yearbook as well.
In the face of all this, Hill, armed with a $90,000 grant from the Freedom Forum ? to which $25,000 was recently added ? took a year off from the paper to act as a journalist-in-residence, strengthening these programs "to prevent the demise of high school journalism in D.C.," she said.
The year came to a head recently, with the Student Press Day, which Hill hopes to make into an annual event.
Held on the campus of Howard University, students were offered instruction in layout and design, covering sensitive issues, editing, writing editorials, interviewing, student press rights, feature and environmental reporting, editorial management and a host of other subjects.
Classes also were available to the advisers on subjects including project reporting, scholastic press legal issues and particularly advertising to help them learn to be more self-sufficient in case their budgets are cut further.
Instructors included the Washington Post's Lynne Duke, Donna Britt and Laura Blumenfeld; Jack Germond of the Baltimore Sun; USA Today graphics director Dash Parham; Howard University professor Michael Tucker, and others.
In addition, recruiters from a number of colleges and universities ? such as Harvard, Syracuse and Rutgers ? were available to meet with the students to discuss their academic futures.
While working with each of the 18 school papers, Hill said she was impressed by the quality of the products and by how well the students write.
Subjects the students are tackling now certainly go far beyond reprinting school lunch menus and running honor roll lists. They address such issues as sexual harassment, violence, rape, guns, metal detectors in schools, sex and issuing condoms in schools, and other things kids that young should not have to think about but must.
Asking a teen-ager what he or she wants to do for a living is akin to asking your boss for a raise ? the answers are polite but non-committal at best. Only a few of the students who spoke to E&P had decided on a career in journalism.
Many students are torn about their futures, Hill noted, but events such as Student Press Day help them see there are possibilities, that they can get into college and get a job.
"This is really the future of journalism. This is how you get more minority journalists in the newsroom," Hill said, adding that by the year 2000, these young people will be ready to enter the work force.