Highlander staff faces potential shortage for upcoming year

The Highlander, the school’s award-winning newspaper, faces a potential shortage in the upcoming school year as graduating seniors depart. 

All but three of the 13 editors on staff are Seniors who are set to graduate this year and one Junior is preparing to head off to college early meaning The Highlander will only have two returning members for the following year. Currently, 13 students are taking the pre-requisite course, Journalism. The Highlander’s advisor, Brian Graham has not yet lost hope.

“I hope to get a lot of good enthusiastic writers in the Journalism class so we can have a full staff in the next two years,” said Graham.

Maintaining a large and dedicated newspaper staff is necessary to keep the paper up and running. With each edition spanning 12 pages, editors are each assigned to a specific page and are responsible for designing, planning, and completing their pages. These editors consist of News Editors, Opinions editors, a Features editor, an Entertainment editor, Sports editors, and reporters. The staff as a whole is responsible for planning future editions as a team, writing stories while meeting and creating self-made deadlines, conducting student-led meetings, and distributing editions throughout the school. All stories are placed on the online website and onto each editor and reporter's personal profile where readers can view the staff’s individual stories.

The Highlander has been around since 1954, reporting first under the name of Douglas News, then was renamed The Highlander later that same year. From volume one to 69, The Highlander has faced almost seven decades of reporting, designing, and photographing. Some editors fear the newspaper staff shortage could just be due to a lack of interest.

Senior Opinions Editor Kim Phan said “Nobody wants to write anymore. Nobody wants to read anymore either.” 

The passion for the art of journalism is rooted in the prerequisite journalism class for many of the students on staff. Editors credit the lessons taught in journalism, the friendships created within the staff,  and the opportunity to share their writing with a large audience as what inspired them to continue on staff. 

In the prerequisite Journalism class, students learn the basics of reporting, writing in News English, principles of photography, and graphic design. At times the Journalism class’ stories will get selected throughout the year for publication in The Highlander along with the staff’s stories.

“Newspaper has greatly impacted my writing abilities and English classes. Writing essays seems so much easier now after learning about News English,” said Features Editor Katie Liang. “I also made some great friends along the way, and despite the decline in popularity of newspapers, making one with other people, and watching others read our hard work was more fun than I’ve ever expected.”