STUDENTS ON THE BEAT
East Bay high school journalists scramble for scoops, funds
Peggy Spear
Friday, February 25, 2000
©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/02/25/EB15655.DTL



When 17-year-old Seetha Vemireddy died in her Berkeley apartment from carbon monoxide poisoning last fall, the story made news in the Bay Area and heightened awareness about the deadly gas.

Meanwhile, the staff at Berkeley High's Jacket, the biweekly student newspaper, was working on a different angle.

``When we heard about the story, we were all wondering why this 17-year-old girl was not enrolled in any local high school,'' says Editor in Chief Steven Barrie-Anthony, 18. ``So we started poking around.''

What the high school journalists uncovered turned out to be one of the hottest stories in the state: Vemireddy, it turns out, was allegedly one of many ``indentured servants'' in the Bay Area brought to the United States from India in exchange for work and, sometimes, sex.

The story ran in the Jacket's December 10 edition, and within two months, Vemireddy's landlord, Lakireddy Bali Reddy, was arrested and charged with illegally bringing her and other young women to the United States as sex slaves.

The Jacket's story was, in the best sense of the word, a scoop, and it illustrates the growing sophistication of high school journalism. While the pages of the East Bay's high school papers have their share of rally stories and prom-queen profiles, they also are at the forefront of reporting topics that concern teens today: race issues, homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, and fears about the future.

And as high school newspapers become more sophisticated, so do their problems.


``I remember the days when an adventurous story at a high school level meant getting as much dirty words and tasteless influences as they (the student journalists) could,'' says Berkeley High teacher Rick Ayers, 53, the Jacket faculty adviser. ``We would get in trouble because it wasn't good journalism. These days, we get in trouble because of good journalism.''

Both Ayers and Barrie-Anthony are in the thick of a mini-mutiny on the Berkeley High School campus these days. A special edition published February 2 highlighted the unpopular policies and practices of principal Theresa Saunders and some of her staff, as well as the poor condition of the school. The result: rallies and a student strike, threats of lawsuits and a crash course in the ``Power of the Press.''


The Jacket has a history of not shying away from controversial topics, and Ayers says that he is proud of the high road the students take. ``They are good journalists, and they get the facts, no matter what flack they get from the administration or other students.''


The risks pay off, as the Jacket has received numerous state and national awards for student journalism. Still, Barrie-Anthony says that all they are doing is reporting the news from a young person's perspective. ``In the Reddy story, the first question we all asked was, `Does the victim go to high school here?' When we found out she didn't, the next question was, `Why not?' I'm really surprised no one else went after that angle of the story, but because we were in high school, it made sense to us. I don't think professional journalists would have seen it from that angle, but we did, and we went after it.'' Like their professional counterparts, Jacket reporters have a network of good sources, both within the high school community and in the greater Bay Area, which is why they are able to report on Berkeley so effectively. And, Barrie-Anthony says, ``It felt really good to beat the big boys'' with the scoop.

Besides the news stories, the paper carries traditional opinion, feature and sports stories, as well as a Multilingual page, where teens from the school's diverse student body write essays in their native languages. In the last issue, students wrote in Spanish, Chinese, Swedish, Japanese, Hindi and Urdu. ``It's obvious that the student press isn't just `practice press,' '' Ayers says. ``They really are an important part of the Berkeley High community.'' Along with more sophisticated news coverage, many student papers are appearing on the Internet, and schools -- such as Oakland's Fremont High School -- have extensive multimedia components, including video and broadcast training.

``These kids who take journalism these days aren't just taking it to get an easy A,'' says Berkeley High's Ayers. ``They are learning a lot, from newswriting to desktop publishing to advertising sales to posting on the Internet,'' he says. ``These are truly marketable skills.''


Unfortunately, these advancements come when high school newspapers may be teetering on the brink of extinction.


Steve O'Donoghue has been advising student newspapers for 20 years, and works with the student journalists at Fremont High in Oakland. ``With the `return to basics' philosophy in education, high school journalism classes are being edged out in favor of more AP classes,'' he says.

O'Donoghue's outlook is echoed by Arnetta Garcin, a journalism instructor at San Jose's Lynbrook High School, who is instrumental in the Northern California chapter of the Journalism in Education Association.

``With the new state standards in education, journalism is not even mentioned, and that gives a green light to schools and districts to pull their program,'' she says. ``After all, journalism is costly, it requires a lot of work, and is oftentimes a headache for the administration. Why not get rid of it?'' At the same time, O'Donoghue and Garcin worry about the number of qualified instructors advising the school papers.

``Advising the school newspaper was seen as a low-job-on-the-totem pole,'' O'Donoghue says. ``It's usually given to the teacher with least amount of teaching experience, because it was seen as a thankless job.'' He says his background was typical of many student newspaper advisers. ``I was a young history teacher, so I was saddled with the student newspaper,'' he says. ``There was absolutely no training, and no degree required. What I found out was that there wasn't a healthy respect for student newspapers among the staff.'' O'Donoghue allied himself with the JEA, and through a series of workshops and conferences -- as well as networking -- learned the skills necessary to lead his young students in production, printing and ad sales. Now, 20 years later, the Green & Gold is a healthy monthly publication at Fremont High, and O'Donoghue is very active in several extra- curricular groups, including the JEA, the Newspapers in Education Program and Oakland-based Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, which helps fund more than 10 school papers throughout the Bay Area. He also is working to get more minority advisers involved in journalism.

Garcin and O'Donoghue are heartened by some strong efforts to integrate literature and writing courses into journalism courses. At Lowell High School in San Francisco, journalism has been reworked into an English AP course, giving young students the opportunity to get AP credits while putting out a paper. ``It's going to take a lot of effort by students, teachers, parents and especially professional journalists to lobby schools and districts to help keep journalism a part of the high school curriculum,'' says Garcin. If student journalism is removed from the the curriculum at high schools, there are ways to keep a student voice on campus, O'Donoghue says, including offering the class as part of the Regional Occupation Program -- as is the case at San Ramon's California High School -- or creating an extracurricular journalism club.

In Berkeley, it appears that journalism is going to remain a part of the high school curriculum despite the controversy the paper sometimes stirs up. And that's as it should be, says editor Barrie-Anthony.

``We are only reporting what everyone is saying,'' he says. ``And we check our facts. Isn't that what a newspaper is supposed to do?''

Peggy Spear is a free-lance writer. Send comments to ebayfriday@sfgate.com.

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