Young journos press onward

In Allen Harrison’s journalism classroom on Wednesday, a half-dozen students sat around the computers assembling their annual newspaper edition for the graduating class. The staffers pasted together senior goodbyes, created a map of college destinations, and left the first three pages blank for photos of Costa Mesa High School’s 12th-grade trip to Arizona.

Meanwhile, for ninth-grader Joe Blackwell, it was business as usual. While the seniors a few desks away commemorated the end of high school, Joe prepared an editorial on a specifically school-related topic: sustained silent reading, known as SSR.

“They’re talking about getting rid of SSR, and I think we should keep it because it’s valuable time,” said Joe, 15, who is finishing his first year on the paper’s staff.

Every month this year, Harrison’s class has put out the Hitching Post, the school’s student-run newspaper. For the final issue, set to roll off the printer in mid-June, the class is making a double issue: 12 pages for the senior class, and 12 for those still in the trenches.

To the strains of the Beatles, the Kinks and others playing over stereo speakers, the newspaper class of 2006 prepared its last hurrah.

Most students on Costa Mesa High’s newspaper staff start as freshmen or sophomores and climb through the ranks by their senior year. The staff features a senior editor and a junior co-editor who is set to take over next fall, and there are positions for younger students as well ? the paper features a special section for middle-schoolers, edited by ninth-graders.

“It’s kind of rising up the ladder, and if a lot of cream rises to the top, there’s an interview process,” Harrison said. “If anyone’s been working on the paper for two years, you know what they can do.”

The front page of the Hitching Post over the last nine months has featured Hurricane Katrina, the school’s annual dodge ball tournament and, in the coming issue, the winners of the Mr. and Ms. Mesa competition. Inside, the paper also includes students’ poetry and photography, a humor page by junior Andrew Sinajon, and an “Old School” column in which teachers write about their remembered youth.

For the final issue, senior Lincoln Tran was preparing a story about his environmental science class raising money to fight hunger, while sophomore Jaci Cheskes-Harris planned an editorial defending the legitimacy of the Iraq War. With so many diverse features, editor-in-chief Judie Akansel said it was easy to hook reader interest.

“We all have a stack of papers and we go around to distribute them,” said Judie, 18. “When we do, everyone puts their books down and runs up to get it.”

The readers get to play a bigger part than usual in the last issue of the year. Toward the end of spring, the editors hand out green sheets to all 12th-grade English classes, asking students to submit senior goodbyes and also mock awards for their classmates ? most likely to succeed, most likely to end up in jail, and so on. The editors plan to print the best ones in the paper.

Longtime friends Bethany Vergara and Scott Knox, both members of the Hitching Post staff, got a ringing accolade from their classmates: Most likely to get married. They were blasé about it, however.

“We got that in the yearbook, too,” said Bethany, 18. “So it’s cool.”