Trojan Times goes online

• Meeting deadline

Juniors Amber Kelley (left) and Annie Zaske say they enjoy writing horoscopes for The Trojan Times, Worthington High School’s online newspaper.

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• The Trojan Times

WORTHINGTON — The last time Worthington High School had a student newspaper, most of the students in Stacy Sauerbrei’s Trojan Online class were still in diapers.

This year, those same students are helping to revive the paper — but in an online format they’ve dubbed The Trojan Times.

“A lot of schools are doing an online newspaper instead of a physical one because that’s what people are interested in,” Sauerbrei explained.

The Area Learning Center has had a student-run newspaper for several years, and Ray Lowry, a former teacher at the ALC encouraged Sauerbrei to develop the program at the high school.

Sauerbrei’s class meets every morning to talk about specific writing techniques and brainstorm story ideas. Because the paper is a weekly format, they can also watch the online edition being put together piece by piece. Then, they go to work.

Students say they enjoy having the freedom to write about what interests them — in contrast with the average high school English class.

“I’m creative and I like to have fun with writing different types of things,” said junior Amber Kelley, who most recently wrote a calorie counting piece on fast food in Worthington. “I want to write what I want to write, not just what someone tells me to write.”

Sauerbrei said another benefit to the class is the opportunity for students to reach a wider audience with their writing.

“A lot of times they’ll write this really neat stuff and the only person who gets to read it is the teacher,” he said. “The first day of class I said, ‘OK, now you’re going to have your classmates reading your work and parents reading your work.’ I think they were excited and intimidated by it. And I’m excited and intimidated by it, too.”

The class is one quarter long, so Sauerbrei will break in a new group of budding young reporters in a few months.

“It’ll evolve with the students,” he said. “If they are more into creative writing, it might be more of a creative paper. If they’re more into sports, maybe we’ll have a sports paper.”

Jacob Steffl is the senior sports editor. As a football player and wrestler, he said he enjoys writing about the sports he plays, and added that he likes to use creativity and humor in everything he writes.

“A few of my friends have talked to me about it,” Steffl said. “They’ve read my pieces and they enjoy the little dry humor bits I put into it.”

Sauerbrei said student response to the first issues has been positive. He noted how he assigned the students in one of his English classes to write about politics.

“By the end of the class no one was writing a paper. They were all online reading The Trojan Times,” he said. “I kind of couldn’t get too upset about that.”

On the Net:

http://www.isd518.net/hs/TOL/Trojantimes.htm

Tags: news, worthington, whs, trojans, newspaper