Why a student newspaper?

Since Graham, the publisher and founder of The Washington Post, spent a large part of his life working in journalism, he knew just how important it was in our world, both past and present. We here at The General Consensus agree with Graham, and we believe that this class is an important rough draft in the history of this school. When those in the future look back at our school’s history and achievements, The General Consensus will be the record of this history.

The need for a student newspaper is something that cannot be ignored. Student newspapers are often overlooked, and many schools don’t even have one. They can be seen as a waste of time or something that can be sidelined, but this can’t be further from the truth.

School newspapers give the student body a unique voice to share their opinions. Without a place for opinions to be shared, schools may not know what is best for the students, or how they feel about important issues. A newspaper allows students to give suggestions to school administrators about how to improve the school and what they think about dilemmas facing our community.

A student newspaper also is extremely useful for organizing events and keeping the school informed on what is happening, and when. For example, most kids don’t know when an athletic event or club meeting is going on, or where it takes place. The newspaper could help solve this problem, and has the power to inform the community on meeting times, locations, and game scores.

The newspaper can also give students the chance to try activities they otherwise wouldn’t even be aware of. These activities could be clubs, theatre productions, and sports tryouts. Many students don’t know how many different clubs exist at Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School because some clubs don’t get a lot of attention. The General Consensus aims to fix this issue by highlighting new and exciting clubs, or even ones that have existed for a long time. The more involved students are in the community, the better.

This newspaper will also serve as a convenient and well organized place to keep up on current events, both in our school and, most importantly, in our world. It is extremely important to us that the students of the high school are well informed on current events. Because of the fear of fake news in today’s society, it is often confusing to find out what is truth and what is fiction. This newspaper will strive to always provide the clear facts in all of our news stories, and we will be a newspaper you can trust.

Beyond that, The General Consensus has recently taken a step forward into the digital world of news. The online newspaper is well organized and polished for students to read whenever and wherever they want. With the new advancements of our digital paper, we hope to provide a convenient place to find information on clubs, current events, school events, as well as to provide a service that every student can be apart of.

We hope our digital paper edition of the newspaper will be better than ever, as we have tried to make sure that the articles are relevant and eye-catching. We hope you will appreciate every edition we send out and enjoy everyone’s contributions, no matter how small. Everyone has worked immeasurably hard in our class to bring their talents and ideas to the newspaper.

Most of all, we are here to serve the school community and to be your voice. We want to hear your feedback and bring your ideas to the table because we care about this newspaper, and we hope you will as well.