Editorial: Young People Are Making Themselves Heard

We’ve noted before in this space how the many and varied depredations of the Trump administration, while catastrophic for truth, decency, the rule of law and America’s standing in the world, have at the same time had the salutary effect of boosting interest in journalism among young people. Colleges and universities are reporting increasing applications to their undergraduate and graduate journalism programs, and many are adding faculty and expanding facilities to accommodate the surge.

As staff writer Sarah Earle reported in a recent two-part series, however, that trend is perhaps less pronounced at the high school level.

While nearly every high school seemed to have a student newspaper a generation ago, relatively few offer the activity today. Mascoma Valley Regional High School’s student newspaper folded several years ago when the school stopped offering a journalism class, and neither Hartford High School nor Thetford Academy have a journalism class or newspaper club.

An exception is Hanover High School, where four print editions of the Broadside are scheduled to come out this year, digital editions appear every two or three weeks, and the website is updated weekly.

Another exception is Lebanon High School, where students produce editions of the LHS Times on a varied schedule. Plus there’s The Buzz, Woodstock Union High School’s online newspaper, which has a staff of a dozen students, and students in Kearsarge Regional High School’s new journalism class just produced the first edition of their new paper,

And then there’s The Claw, a digital news site produced entirely by students at Kimball Union Academy. KUA was the alma mater of freelance journalist Steven Sotloff, who wrote for Time magazine, Foreign Policy, the Christian Science Monitor and other publications before being abducted in northern Syria in 2013 and killed by Islamic State militants a year later. “Spurred by the late alumnus Steven Sotloff’s passion for journalism, the school seeks to empower student voices in the twenty-first century,” The Claw’s website says. “Kimball Union Academy appreciates the roles that free speech and active press play in advancing a community.”

Our mail shows that to be true. Shortly before Christmas, nine letters arrived at the Valley News from Kimball Union Academy students. Although, as one writer acknowledged, the letters were part of “a little history project,” they are hardly pro forma. The topics they address range from the injustice of the death penalty to problems faced by veterans to abortion rights to concerns about social media, among others. They are informed and the writers’ opinions are passionately expressed.

Several of those letters appear in today’s Forum. Others will be published in the coming days. And, as always, Upper Valley students are welcome to share their opinions with us, and with the wider Upper Valley community, by writing to forum@vnews.com. As we saw in the recent midterm elections — and in the ongoing debates over gun safety, climate change and student debt, to name just a few hot topics — young people are increasingly making themselves heard on the national stage, and to good effect. Here’s hoping they keep it up.