On a recent Sunday afternoon, eight Lyons Township High School students gathered in a second-floor classroom and began plotting the undercover operation.
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Two students were anointed the operatives and were told to dress normally, act casually and track every step of the suspects. Whenever they saw a classmate steal food from the cafeteria lunch line, they were to jot it down.
Launching a covert plan to spy on classmates might seem an unusual exercise for high school students. But not for editors of The Lion, the award-winning student newspaper of Lyons Township High School in La Grange.
Such stories are one reason The Lion was named last month as the best student paper of its size in the country for the third consecutive year. It also was named one of 26 Pacemakers, an award based on three semesters’ worth of work.
The Lion, Illinois’ oldest continuously published student newspaper, competed against nearly 300 other high school newspapers in the country to garner the award–the Pulitzer Prize of high school journalism.
“The Lion is one of the most solid, well-written high school newspapers in the country,” said Bill Norton, who works for The Kansas City Star and coordinated the judging for the annual National Scholastic Press Association competition. “Adults who are looking for a good newspaper would be fortunate if their local paper were as solid as The Lion. The paper is on the top tier of student newspapers, and the competition is tough.”
Unlike most high school newspapers, The Lion does not serve as a public relations tool for the school, jammed with feel-good stories about the sports teams and the homecoming dance. Instead, it tackles controversial issues affecting teenagers, whether they are of local, national or international concern.
During the paper’s 90-year history, Lion reporters have covered the murder of a student, teenage pregnancy, runaways and race relations at the school. Most recently, they wrote a scathing account of a wheelchair-bound student’s inability to get to class on time because an elevator was out of service; persuaded state officials to turn over student attendance records when local school officials would not; and printed a front-page note that a race relations story was pulled because of pressure from a principal, who has since left the school.
The Lion also has covered the Vietnam War’s toll on La Grange families; run a first-person account of a former student’s reaction to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; and detailed students’ reactions to the Columbine massacre.
“What makes this paper so special is that its universe is not just the high school’s walls,” Norton said. “The kids stretch beyond that and take on state and national issues. And the articles are well-written, balanced and organized.”
Barb Thill, faculty adviser for the last 11 years, said that since its inception, The Lion has been more than an organ for the school district.
“There is a fierce pride at this school in doing things right and being willing to let kids experiment and push the envelope,” Thill said. “It shows in every aspect of this school, and it shows in the student newspaper.”
Producing a quality monthly school newspaper is no easy task.
The reporters, like those at a large metropolitan daily, must provide blanket coverage of the perplexing issues facing students, teachers and administrators. But unlike their professional counterparts, high school reporters technically work for the people they are covering. As a result, they often find themselves at odds with school officials who don’t want negative stories in the paper.
And school newspapers do not enjoy the same 1st Amendment protection as their professional counterparts. In 1988 the U.S. Supreme Court held that school officials could censor articles in a school newspaper without infringing on the 1st Amendment rights of students.
That issue has been moot at The Lion, where students have almost unfettered control of editorial content. Under a policy adopted in the 1970s, the student editorial board has the power to decide what goes into the newspaper.
District Supt. Dennis Kelly said he wholeheartedly supports the policy but admits he still cringes before every issue of the newspaper comes out.
“But the purpose of this paper is not to make me feel comfortable,” said Kelly, a former high school newspaper adviser. “The purpose is to teach kids how to be journalists. I don’t always like what they print, but the only way for these kids to learn is through trial and error.”
That’s not to say students have never been reined in. Thill successfully argued–to the consternation of some students–against publishing a two-page spread on the most fashionable underwear and against a quote that contained a reference to the male anatomy.
Lion staffers also have run afoul of the administration and their classmates.
Last year, with the help of law-enforcement officials, Lion reporters visited restaurants and convenience stores in the La Grange area to see if merchants would sell them alcohol. The merchants did, and The Lion produced a two-page package detailing the ease with which underage staff members bought liquor.
“We got a bunch of calls from kids in the school who were mad the story ruined their chances to buy beer,” recalled Dan Corcoran, 17, managing editor of The Lion. “We didn’t feel bad, though, because first of all it’s illegal, and secondly, they shouldn’t be doing it.”
Corcoran said the hubbub blew over quickly. But other stories have left deeper scars. Last year, the paper ran a story about student cheating that caused an uproar among school officials and parents. And the story about the wheelchair-bound student elicited great angst within the school administration.
While working at the paper, reporters learn to work together for a common cause, see both sides of a story, meet deadlines and become more sensitive to the differences among a student body that has become increasingly diverse.
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That lesson was painfully realized earlier this month when a student wrote a letter to the editor complaining that African-Americans and goths were being ignored in the “Who We Are” page, a new section that focuses on different groups of students. Last month, 10 Lion reporters spent several days interviewing students and produced an expanded “Who We Are.” There were no African-Americans on the page.
“It was painful,” said Kate Hedlin, editor in chief of The Lion. “We felt awful because the section was having the exact opposite effect of what we were trying to do–step back and look at our diversity.”
Hedlin said editors talked for hours about the letter and about their coverage. They toyed with the idea of having a quota of minority voices in every story but rejected it as contrived and superficial. Instead, this month’s “Who We Are” features stories written by students of Serbian, Polish, Mexican and Macedonian descent describing what they do for Christmas.
“That letter hurt, but it made us think,” Hedlin said. “From now on, we’re going to be very careful about who we interview and about how we represent people.”
As for the lunch-line undercover operation, two Lion staff writers watched during two lunch periods as at least eight students snatched food without paying. One boy grabbed a handful of french fries and gobbled them while standing in line. The rest stuffed bags of potato chips, fruit or other items into their baggy clothing and then waltzed out of line.
Jenny Harrington, an 18-year-old assistant news editor who reported for the story, said Lion staffers wrestled with whether to identify and interview the students they caught. In the end, they opted to leave the names out and instead focused on the cafeteria workers who are too busy to stop the lunch-line thievery.
“I know people aren’t going to like it,” Harrington said. “It will make people mad, but that’s OK, because that’s what a paper is supposed to do sometimes.”