If you want to change the world, join UHSpress. Why? At UHSpress, we report stories that make a lasting impact on our readers. And that’s how progress is made.

As high school students, our options are limited as far as how seriously adults take our opinions. Student journalism changes that. In some ways, student journalism is more protected than professional journalism. There’s even an organization, the Student Press Law Canter, dedicated to helping ensure these rights aren’t violated. Basically, being on a press staff is more than just turning in an article for homework. If you do it right, you have the resources, and the team, to get back as much passion as you put in to your work.

In another sense, what other class on campus will teach you how to recognize the differences between fact and rumor, news and advertising, news and opinion, or bias and fairness? The hallmark of both news and yearbook is a solid understanding of news literacy. Now more than ever a critical view of news is necessary to securing a safe future. Because of the things journalists do today, we will be able to exercise our own views tomorrow. Name a more interesting class than one where you get a true understanding of what it means to empower the general population. I’ll wait.

But really, there’s nothing quite like being on staff. Most of the time it feels like less of a class and more like a real business. From selling advertisements to local businesses and printing a semester magazine, or using our press passes to shoot events with the 70D, we keep it real here. Sure, we have our share of problems just like anyone else. But the difference with us is we cannot take no for an answer. The index crashed? Great, let’s see who can stay late. An event got moved? Cool, what options do we have for alternative coverage.

Since the fall of 2015, UHSpress has been the voice of students at University. Over the course of just three years, our staff has learned exactly what it takes to make a nationally award-winning yearbook. Usually, that kind of thing takes more than five. Our program’s sponsor, Mrs. Hanks, was invited to speak at a CSPA conference. Schools from all over the nation work their tails off for a shot at that honor. Besides being home to one of two student-run newspapers in the entire county, we didn’t let it go to our heads. Instead, we did more than ever this year, publishing twice the number of articles and updating our site theme and actively promote new types of coverage such as videos and gifs. We’ve come a long way from the program we were three years ago and will continue to improve in whatever ways we can to better meet the needs of our students.

If you wanna be a part of documenting the next chapter in school history, contact Mrs. Hanks in room 4-212 or at [email protected]