By fostering a vibrant student press, Medill shapes future journalists.
By Ed Finkel (BSJ89)
“High school journalists do important work. They’re not just writing articles about who won the football game or what’s for lunch, they’re covering the school board elections, and they’re interviewing the candidates about important issues that students care about. And these publications are serving as the students’ voice, which is so powerful.”
From June 25 to 26, teachers from Chicagoland, and a few visiting from Florida, gathered at Medill’s downtown newsroom for a unique training session as part of Medill’s Teach for Chicago Journalism program (TFCJ).
For the past five years, this annual training has provided high school educators an opportunity to engage with speakers and network with one another, garnering information and inspiration to train the next generation of potential journalists and media consumers.
“We’re helping to not only get young people engaged in journalism, as journalists, but also to engage in journalism as a reliable source of information,” said Michael Spikes, director of TFCJ and a lecturer at Medill.
First up among presenters was Rachel Roberson (BSJ96), senior program manager – education content at KQED-FM in San Francisco, who regaled attendees with information about her station’s Youth Media Challenge, which showcases high-school students’ multimedia work nationally. She led them through an exercise in assessing and framing a student’s strengths, along with how to (diplomatically) make suggestions and ask questions.
Former high school journalism teacher and advisor Susan Szafranski delivered a session on how to lead a student news organization, emphasizing that a key best practice is giving some of that leadership to the students themselves. “If you’re constantly hovering over them, they’re not going to feel like leaders,” she said. “It frees you up to help with the quality of writing, or a specific direction they might need for something they are covering.”
Veteran adviser and journalism teacher Susan Szfranski spoke to the participants about how to set up an editing system in the classroom that empowers students. After the presentation, teachers said they walked away with a new perspective on how they could engage their students in the editing process. Credit: Mike Spikes
Veteran adviser and journalism teacher Susan Szfranski spoke to the participants about how to set up an editing system in the classroom that empowers students. After the presentation, teachers said they walked away with a new perspective on how they could engage their students in the editing process. Credit: Mike Spikes
Szfranski takes questions from participants after her presentation. Credit: Ed Finkel
Szfranski takes questions from participants after her presentation. Credit: Ed Finkel
Rebecca Duffy, marketing and communication specialist at Medill who manages the school’s social media, provided tips and tricks on building compelling, regularly updated social media pages. A former television reporter, Duffy discussed how to break down your audience by channel, determine which stories to share on each, and unmistakably brand your page.
Rebecca Duffy, Medill's Social Media Manager, spoke to participants about different ways to engage students, parents, and alumni through social media. Duffy explained how allowing students to create and manage accounts for their publications will prepare students for the real-life demands of a journalist in today's world. Credit: Mike Spikes
Rebecca Duffy, Medill's Social Media Manager, spoke to participants about different ways to engage students, parents, and alumni through social media. Duffy explained how allowing students to create and manage accounts for their publications will prepare students for the real-life demands of a journalist in today's world. Credit: Mike Spikes
Jodi Jasmin Pelini (BSJ96), a former television reporter and anchor who has taught for 25 years, the past six as digital media instructor at Alan B. Shepard High School in Palos Heights, was inspired by the content. “You always think there’s nothing new you need to learn. I took 20 pages of notes and made a to-do list of things I want to try. It reinvigorates your philosophy and curriculum to talk to other teachers about what they’ve tried. … Journalism is such a changing field. No matter what, my lesson plans always need to change and evolve.”
Back for her second year was Abigail Glickman, English and journalism teacher and newspaper advisor at Taft High School in Chicago. A reporter in high school who feels “connected to student journalism, and making sure it reaches its audience,” Glickman said, “I had no prior experience teaching journalism before this. I always walk away with new ideas to take to my classroom, sometimes just hearing from other journalism teachers.”
BEYOND CHERUBS
For years, Medill’s best-known program for high-school-aged students has been the celebrated Cherubs program which concluded its 87th year July 25. Today, Medill has a variety of community-centered programs designed to feed the journalistic funnel and inspire the next generation of media professionals.
- Teach for Chicago Journalism, which in addition to the teacher training provides outreach and mentoring to high-school journalism faculty and their students.
- The Scholastic Press Association of Chicago (SPAC), which moved its headquarters to Northwestern in 2021 (as part of TFCJ) and enables collaboration among students, teachers, local news media, and colleges and universities. Public, private and parochial schools in Chicago can join for free and participate in an annual conference and contest.
- A new module add-on for the College Board’s AP Seminar course is a first step toward the creation of an official AP Journalism course, which the College Board has expressed active interest in, in hopes of enticing more students to take high school journalism. About a dozen schools used the module, titled Media, Journalism and Democracy, last school year, and Medill is hoping to roll it out more broadly for the 2025-26 school year.
- In June, Medill became the new institutional home for the Illinois Journalism Education Association (IJEA).
Medill’s goals revolve around reviving the declining network of scholastic journalism and inspiring the next generation of journalists to pursue careers in the field, said Tim Franklin, the associate dean at Medill who oversees the Medill Local News Initiative.
“We had to start by rebuilding publications and the student press,” he said. “Just as there are news deserts nationally, there were scholastic news deserts in parts of Chicago. The question was, could we help build and create programs in student journalism in Chicago to help plug some of those gaps — and to show students the mission and value of public service journalism?”
Katie Fernandez, senior program coordinator for TFCJ and executive director of SPAC since 2022, said the school’s motivations are twofold. “If high school students aren’t learning about the news and the press, they are not going to get to any college campus and decide to become a journalist,” she said. “Beyond that, not only is it important for our democracy to have a strong news system, but also our students need to learn how to consume the news, which is done through journalism classes and high-school newspapers.”
While young people and Americans in general have access to a huge amount of information, its quality varies dramatically, Spikes said. “I don’t always like using military analogies, but we’re like the soldiers on the ground, trying to fight the good fight of helping sustain journalism as a whole,” Spikes said. “If we don’t, we’re going to find that we are not going to have a pipeline of students that’s going to be interested in—or even know—what the role of journalism needs to be in our society, as part of a democracy.”
TEACH FOR CHICAGO JOURNALISM
Medill has offered the teacher trainings as part of TFCJ for the past five years on a variety of topics, initially remote but more recently in person, Fernandez said, adding that the community it builds among teachers is one of the best aspects.
“We try to ask the teachers beforehand what they need, and then we do our best to serve that need,” she said. “Our Medill faculty are always willing to speak, and we also have local reporters who come speak, as well.”
Fernandez also has coached new journalism teachers and advisors through a mentoring program with the National Journalism Education Association helping with curriculum and media projects. “I’ve had teachers reach out and say, ‘I’m just starting a program. How can you help?’” said Fernandez, who walked in their shoes as a journalism teacher in Chicago Public Schools for 13 years. “We have worked with schools in a lot of different capacities. Sometimes, it’s been directly going to the school and helping them start a publication. Some of them, it’s just helping them find the resources.”
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to saving high-school journalism, Fernandez said, so TFCJ has tried several different approaches. Through a partnership with Report for America, for example, Medill brought in a journalist who helped restart a newspaper at Schurz High School that had been dormant for 25 years. Alumni and other media professionals have volunteered to speak, “everything from on-air talent, to producers, to editors, to reporters, and they cover a variety of topics,” she said. “We’ve been really trying to cultivate more of our alumni connections. … Because the teachers don’t always have the time to facilitate that, and they don’t always have the connections to facilitate that, either.”
Spikes, a former high school media studies and media production teacher in Washington, D.C., said that he and Fernandez connect well with the advisors and work to connect them with one another, since so many of them are one-faculty-member-operations at their respective schools. “It can become really isolating in a way, so we try to build that community for them,” he said.
TFCJ helped inspire Jane Shin Agler (MSJ21), now an assignment editor at NBC5 in Chicago, to start a publication at Curie High School in Chicago during the 2022-23 school year. Fernandez had sent a mass email to recent Medill graduates about the possibility, and as a Chicago native who had been to Curie frequently as a high-school athlete — and a PR and marketing person at the time with a part-time, flexible schedule — Agler jumped at the chance.
“I was very well-supported,” she said. “Medill has so many connections to youth organizations in the city. Tons of alumni work in these places.” Agler added that the publication the group of about 10 students produced for the 3,000-student school “was very popular when it hit the classrooms. … I connected with my students a lot, too. I stay in touch with them. I relate to them going through everything they have as Chicago students. I’m excited for their futures.”
NEW SPAC HQ—AND OTHER AFFILIATIONS
Around the time TFCJ got underway, Franklin heard from Linda Jones, a journalism professor at Roosevelt University. At the time, she was leading SPAC but looking to take a step back. She asked if Medill would be interested in taking the baton. Franklin jumped at the chance.
“If we’re going to run a program geared toward scholastic journalism in Chicago, having SPAC based at Medill seemed to make a lot of sense,” Franklin said. That led to the hiring of Fernandez, who had been heavily involved in SPAC and brought institutional knowledge and contacts.
This year’s SPAC conference, held in March at Medill, was the group’s 35th annual, welcoming about 100 attendees from 14 schools, Fernandez said. Senior lecturer Natalie Moore, Medill’s director of audio journalism programming and a reporter for WBEZ-FM in Chicago, gave the keynote speech, recalling her beginnings as a CPS student who won her first-ever journalism award from SPAC. The contest contains categories ranging from Best Audio Journalism to Best Feature and awards a $1,500 scholarship for the Chicago Journalist of the Year, one each for a teacher and a student, to study journalism over the summer wherever they choose.
Fernandez sees SPAC as helping to further the connections to students made through TFCJ. “That serves to honor and champion the work that students are doing,” she said. Beyond the contest and conference, SPAC has undertaken smaller projects such as connecting students with professors at Medill to poll teens about their concerns during the last mayoral election, after which they analyzed the data “and wrote stories for their school publications,” she added.
Glickman and her students love the SPAC competition. “I don’t think writers do a lot of competing in high school, and it’s fun to get into the competition aspect,” she said. “They did walk away with a few awards, which was exciting for them.” Not only that, but the editor-in-chief of the Taft newspaper publicly interviewed Moore. “That was really impactful for her, as a high school senior about to go out into the world,” she said. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for her to sit on stage with a famous journalist.”
Ryan Maggid, vice president of SPAC and journalism advisor at Jones College Prep High School, said that in addition to the conference and awards, “there [have] been a ton of different programs, and field trips that schools have the opportunity to take students on. This year, Katie arranged a trip to WGN studios, where we got the tour and got to see some production.”
Participants at the annual Teacher Training turn to a partner to share how they will take what they have learned and use it in their classroom. The theme of this year's training was "Level Up" which was chosen to challenge advisers to find one aspect of their program to make better. Credit: Ed Finkel
Participants at the annual Teacher Training turn to a partner to share how they will take what they have learned and use it in their classroom. The theme of this year's training was "Level Up" which was chosen to challenge advisers to find one aspect of their program to make better. Credit: Ed Finkel
As someone who has been part of IJEA for about 15 years, Fernandez is thrilled with the IJEA addition. “This is a really big deal for advisors because it’s their first stop, when they become an advisor, to go to the IJEA’s fall conference for training and support,” Fernandez said. “They enter their students into contests. And they also find a strong community of Illinois advisors who are willing to share resources and advice."
NEXT UP: ADVANCED PLACEMENT (AP) JOURNALISM
At the outset of TFCJ, Medill had conducted focus groups with high-school journalism advisors to ask why they thought fewer students seemed interested in journalism classes, Franklin explained. The most common answer: there is no Advanced Placement course in journalism, and the best and brightest students are very focused on taking AP courses to set the table for college.
Franklin “scheduled a call with the College Board for what I reviewed as a long shot,” he said. “To my pleasant surprise, they were not only welcoming of the idea, but even enthusiastic about it.”
Fernandez said the College Board laid out what’s typically a seven-year-long process starting with the AP Seminar, which focused on “so many skills that overlap with journalism: verifying sources, credibility, research, writing,” she said. Medill worked during the 2023-24 school year with four pilot schools, three in CPS and one suburban school, all of whose teachers both have journalism backgrounds and have taught AP classes in the past.
The group created a resource packet of more than 60 different articles, videos, interviews and other materials they thought would help students with their research projects—both individual papers and group presentations—to prepare for the AP subject test, Fernandez said. Most students were juniors, though one group was entirely freshmen, and as a whole, their AP Seminar scores exceeded the national average.
“The teachers believed that a lot of that came through the media literacy skills that we focused on,” Fernandez said. “Because one of the key components of research, as everyone knows, is finding good sources and verifying information.” Medill has been promoting the module nationwide to journalism teachers, mainly through JEA national conventions, and teachers throughout the country are using it, she added.
Overall, more than 130 students were involved in piloting the AP Seminar module at four local schools, Spikes said. Since that initial pilot, close to 70 teachers have adopted the module in 65 schools across 27 states.
Medill is hopeful that sometime this fall, the school will receive an official endorsement from the College Board, which said it was “very happy with the module in its current state” and is undertaking a comprehensive internal review before deciding, Spikes said.
Two of The Daily Northwestern editors share what they think high school students should know before entering the world of college journalism. Editors Marisa Guerra Echeverria and David Samson explained the key differences between high school and college journalism along with advice for making it a smooth transition. Credit: Mike Spikes
Two of The Daily Northwestern editors share what they think high school students should know before entering the world of college journalism. Editors Marisa Guerra Echeverria and David Samson explained the key differences between high school and college journalism along with advice for making it a smooth transition. Credit: Mike Spikes
Maggid has been a pilot teacher and curriculum developer for the seminar, which he has taught for about a decade, and he worked with Fernandez and Spikes on how to infuse journalism concepts into his prior curriculum. The seminar is typically a two-year commitment for students, a class taken junior year with an independent project senior year, he said.
The journalism-related resource packet has served as the architecture for the first 10 weeks of the class at Jones, Maggid said. “For the AP test, for the seminar, students have to learn to work with academic documents, news articles and data,” he said. “We tried to mirror the journalism-centric stimulus packet to develop skills they will need to learn for the AP Seminar. For one document I personally developed, I took screenshots on CNN and Fox News, on the same day at the same time. I gave that to students to synthesize and think about media bias.”
Ultimately, Maggid said he and the other three pilot teachers who have worked to create the seminar curriculum will put together students’ and their own testimonials for Spikes and Fernandez to present as part of their results to the College Board.
What ties together the launch of TFCJ, the SPAC headquarters relocation and the pursuit of the AP Journalism concept is the notion that Northwestern should take a leading role in having an impact “not just on our campuses in Evanston and Chicago but the city, writ large,” Franklin said.
“This is yet another way for us to leverage the expertise and talent that we have at Medill … to make the city a better place.” And in the case of the AP seminar, the nation.
Ed Finkel (BSJ89) is a longtime freelance writer and editor (and Evanston townie). Ed can be reached at edfinkel@edfinkel.com.
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