Math Counts: Birkholz and Kassab

Girls' Swim Team: Locklear

Newspaper Club: Seaton

This year, our group will be more than a club; it will be a working newsroom, with reporters, editors, photographers and designers working together to produce a newspaper that will make the whole district proud of West Hills. Our goal is to create nothing less than the best middle-school newspaper in the state.

The Newspaper Club offers you a chance to develop skills in writing and editing that will serve you well through high school and beyond. You'll receive training in the fundamentals of newspaper reporting, writing, editing, photography, page design and headline writing, and you'll be expected to put that training to work for the newspaper. Student journalists must follow the rules of spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure; they must be thorough and fair in their reporting; they must be prepared to revise their drafts to meet the paper's guidelines, as described in "Making News" (see Staff Resources); and they must meet deadlines. 

The club meets every Thursday afternoon, from 3:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., but much of the writing and reporting work must be done during school hours or from home, and not all students will be required to attend every meeting. You'll be working in small groups, or "desks," organized according to areas of news coverage—for example, the School Desk, Community Desk, Sports Desk and Entertainment Desk, with one editor for each desk. The editors, in turn, constitute the News Desk, and they will work together and with me to make decisions about layout and design. Students who are designated as editors may be asked to attend additional meetings as deadlines require.

Each staff member will receive a WHMS Press pass. This is a special photo ID badge that you wear whenever you are on assignment. It indicates that you are working for the newspaper and that you deserve the respect due to a member of the working press. It also makes it clear that you are representing the newspaper and your school, and that you have an obligation to act in a way that reflects well on both. 

Mrs. Parsell