In an era when we hear about media houses shutting down their print publications almost every other week, a tale of high school students mobilizing resources to run a youth magazine informed with high journalistic standards is inspiring.
A group of grade 12 students at White Oaks Secondary School (WOSS) launched Heard- a news magazine in print, aiming to build a credible foundation for future student journalists involved with the publication.
Though WOSS had an online newspaper running for a while, Diya Gupta, the founder, coach and design editor, felt the student community needed a source of information which would be more transparent and have scope for long-form content instead of focussing on issues more immediate in nature when she was enrolled in the second semester of grade 10.
"The online articles don't have the longevity and scope to pursue serious topics or anything in depth. So I wanted a place where people feel comfortable sharing their stories in the format I envisioned and it would be heard by the whole school," she recalled.
Though several high schools nationwide and farther down south have youth magazines, this attempt at WOSS, being the first, naturally had some hiccups in the early stage of conception and pre-production.
Based on her research, Gupta, a grade 12 student, found other high schools running similar publications and contacted their editor-in-chief and advisors. And she got a lot of hand-holding support from a few high schools across North America.
"I drafted a proposal with a detailed plan and sent it to the school principal for approval and reached out to our teachers requesting them to join as advisors," Gupta said.
So far, the magazine has had two issues: 150 copies printed in Dec. 2022 and 222 in April 2023.
The team is excited with a plan to publish a lot more articles in the upcoming three issues this school year as "a lot more people know about the magazine now, and the magazine club also has some content reserved."
Gupta figured out early that considering there was no dedicated class for journalism in high school, the participants in the club would need to be trained with basic foundational skills in journalism, which is often a prerequisite to the news magazines.
A student-led team produces the magazine with hands-on involvement in writing, editing, photography and design.
"So now we have come up with prerequisite courses for all of our reporters, designers and photographers, so they have to complete that before they can start, and then we have like lessons on ethics and journalism, Canadian Press style, etc."
Gupta got continuous support from a Mid-west high school in the U.S., whose editor-in-chief prepared her for the job requiring a solid journalistic foundation.
About the growing interest among the students towards the magazine, the co-editor in chief Spruha Khadilkar said, "Just the fact that it is a print magazine makes it a bit more exclusive because it only happens like two to three times a year and people start looking forward to it. Also, we're hyper-focussed around our school."
The articles in the magazine cater to the needs of the 2500-plus student population at WOSS and span across a range of topics like the International Baccalaureate program, the school history, mental health, AI, inspiring fashion trends and opinion pieces on internalized misogyny and internalized racism.
"We usually end up driving a pretty good balance between hardening issues and kind of light-hearted ones", Khadilkar said.
The current editors hope students continue to be passionate about long-form journalism.
"Once the club gains a level of aggregation with time, that will allow the team to dive deeper into issues and hit more hardening issues," Gupta said.