This story by Jason Starr was first published in the Williston Observer on May 8.
Hey, let’s start a school newspaper!
Those maybe aren’t words you’d expect to hear from high-schoolers in the mid-2020s, but that’s exactly what the three founders of The Hawks’ Nest have done this school year at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg.
Not since 2008 has the high school had a news source readers could physically hold and thumb through. A journalism class produced an online news site in recent years, but even that went dark at the end of last school year.
Enter juniors Grace Warrington, Karmen Wilbur and Lily Gruber, three friends from Shelburne, Williston and Charlotte, respectively, who nurtured a vision of a new student-run print newspaper through last spring and summer. By fall, they had lined up an out-of-state printer and distribution plan, and in October published the premier issue of The Hawks’ Nest. They’ve since published four other issues.
“We knew from the start we wanted to do print,” Wilbur said. “It’s important that people are able to actually pick it up … It’s more likely to be read. With online papers, you have to go out of your way to find them.”
The paper is available in the cafeteria and library, as well as put in teachers’ mailboxes for them to distribute to their homeroom students. Wilbur recalls seeing a classmate discover The Hawks’ Nest for the first time.
“I saw someone pick it up and start reading it and be like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, I had a hand in making that. And now I get to watch you enjoy it.’ … We’ve put so much work into it, and it has been just so cool to see people reading it.”
Operating as a journalism club with a mostly hands-off faculty adviser, The Hawks’ Nest staff has grown to about seven writers, with coverage of sports, academic and arts events, staff profiles, opinion pieces and school policy news.
For the current issue, Warrington wrote Part 1 of a definitive history of CVU school newspapers, with interviews of graduates from the 1970s who recall the days of the school’s original newspaper, The Clarion (1964-1972), and its successor The Cow Valley Press (1972-1979). The Hawks’ Nest will publish Part 2 of that history, written by Wilbur, in its final issue of the school year later this month.
“We think it is important for a high school to have a school newspaper because it is an excellent way to build community and hear everyone’s voices and diverse opinions, along with giving students a chance to practice their journalistic skills,” Warrington, as editor-in-chief, wrote in the paper’s inaugural edition in October.
Faculty adviser Justin Chapman added: “It’s a civic necessity. It’s integral to the functioning of any democratic institution, including and especially public schools … There’s a reason Jefferson referred to the press as the fourth pillar of American Democracy.”
Publishing the paper has brought the founding trio closer together as friends. It’s also given them career skills and leadership experience.
“It’s a way students can collaborate together to make something,” Warrington said. “I also think it’s important that students are given a chance to give their own perspectives on what’s happening in their school and what’s happening in the world, too.”
The challenge of continuity of a school newspaper, with staff constantly moving on through graduation, is illustrated in the rise and fall of former CVU papers: The Clarion, The Cow Valley Press, The Crusader, the Champlain Valley Chronicle. If The Hawks’ Nest is to continue for more than another year, Wilbur, Warrington and Gruber will have to find underclass editors to take the reins.
“I’d love to get some of the incoming freshmen to help because obviously we need to pass it on,” Warrington said.
