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Citrus High School's Newspaper Ditches Paper For Digital

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 10, 2009

With newspaper advertising dollars shrinking in this withering economy and longtime subscribers fleeing for online news sources, The Whirlwind pulled the plug on its paper product this month.

The student newspaper at Citrus High School in Inverness is fully online now, carrying its front page stories, sports items, opinion pages and even movie reviews digitally.

It may be a foreshadowing of what's to come in the industry in general as newspapers across the nation are losing subscribers and advertisers. Such as:

The Chicago Tribune, after 162 years, filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Rocky Mountain News ceased publication just 55 days before its 150th birthday.

The Christian Science Monitor, after 100 years of printing a newspaper, earlier this year announced it is pulling the plug on its daily print product in lieu of a fully digital edition.

Twenty-four students make up the staff of The Whirlwind, which launched its cyber presence on March 4, dumping the printed product.

"With standard newspapers increasingly disappearing," said The Whirlwind's Web site, "it became apparent that the journalism department at Citrus High had to forge ahead into this developing medium in order to stay in line with current trends."

The Whirlwind is the first news publication to go paperless in Citrus County, but it's following a trend set by the nation's newspapers turning away from daily delivery of news on paper.

The student newspaper's adviser, Colleen Bennett, said her reporters and editors are adapting well to the rolling deadlines and added pressure of coming up with story ideas.

"I think that they were a little overwhelmed at first," she said, "but I explained the benefits, like being among only a handful of student newspapers to update their stories daily.

"That," she told them, "is the future."

The results: better journalism, she said.

"I think it is making the kids look deeper at things, not accepting things at face value," she said. "They now are searching to broaden their horizons. It's forcing them to really be the eyes and ears of the school.

"Before, they only did a couple of stories a week and now they are responsible for coming up with five story ideas a week.

"And," she said "they are rising to the occasion."

The Whirlwind used to publish 1,600 copies once a month, and that cost the school district about $3,000 a year.

"Now," Bennett said, "it costs less than $100 a year."

Joe Humphrey, adviser for The Red & Black, Hillsborough High School's award-winning student newspaper, sees more and more student papers taking that route, "just like professional papers that are putting a premium on their Web presence," he said.

The Red & Black, he said, has a "good printing deal," and that means his paper will continue to publish a print product in the foreseeable future, but eventually, "I could see us taking this step to online publishing."

The changing landscape of high school journalism will prepare future reporters and editors for what they will face when they get into the profession, he said.

"I think if they are preparing for careers in journalism," Humphrey said, "they need to understand the Web." His paper created its online presence four years ago and updates its pages only when breaking news happens, like the hiring of a new administrator or when the basketball team wins a big game.

Daily stories filed on daily deadlines might be in the future for online high school newspapers, which now publish once a week at the most.

"I can envision us doing more and more frequent updates," Humphrey said.

Diana Mitsu Klos, senior project manager of the American Society of Newspaper Editors' High School Journalism Initiative, said the high school print-to-digital trend is growing.

One reason, she said, is that the Web is where many if not most young people look for news. They are "digital natives," she said and online is their most natural place to find news.

"The other reason is the practical and economic part of school districts," she said, "the budget cutbacks that are affecting extra curricular activities as well as core journalism classes."

She said a typical high school newspaper costs between $300 and $800 an issue. And as with the industry across the nation, advertising dollars are shrinking, she said.

But the online migration might be a good thing, she said.

"We are beginning to see increasingly, school newspapers enjoying online flexibility to be able to update constantly and cover breaking news and sports events at their schools," she said.

The business of good journalism isn't changing.

"We stress the most basic skills and ethics of journalism," Klos said. "A lot of young people easily learn software programs or how to post and blog; those things come naturally to them.

"In the end, journalism teachers, advisers and those in the profession need to continue teaching the core skills of journalism; critical thinking, clear writing, asking follow-up questions and understanding the need for multiple sourcing.

"Teaching the technology is a lot of fun," she said, "but unless you have content that is well done, that's credible and relates to your audience, it turns out to be just something else out there online."

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at kmorelli@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7760.

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