BANGOR, Maine — Several times a year, Room 007 on the ground floor of John Bapst Memorial High School turns into a makeshift newsroom during lunch. Last Monday, eight students sat on stools around a table while Ellen Coddington, a senior, stood at the blackboard in front of a list of story ideas written in bright red chalk.
“Who’s interested in baby drive?” she asked the group. “You want to do it Jillian?”
“OK.”
Jillian Baker’s name went up on the board next to the words “baby drive.”
“What about movie/book review?” Coddington said, looking out at the group.
“I read a really good book,” Jade Decker said.
“OK,” said Coddington as she wrote Decker’s name on the board. “Those went over really well last time.”
Within minutes, coverage of a Model United Nations trip, Step Up Day, sports and a column on men’s fashion was divvied up among the writers.
The students were pulling together the Tribune, a John Bapst publication that fizzled about 10 years ago but was revived last year under the leadership of three enterprising students.
Coddington and then-seniors Raechel Segal and Rowlin Luo recruited writers and a faculty advisor and taught themselves how to format a publication and how to use Associated Press style. In their first year they released four issues as PDFs, which they emailed to all the students and faculty.
The issue that the group was working on Monday morning will be the fourth this year. Coddington hopes they can pull off six by graduation.
“It took a lot of time and effort trying to figure out how newspapers work,” she said. “It was pretty difficult trying to establish it.”
A number of suggestions for how to improve the publication’s Facebook page, which the students agreed was “way lame,” were discussed at the meeting. More memes and assigning a Facebook editor were possibilities.
For now, the publication still comes out in PDF form. Coddington and her co-editor, Baker, said they get feedback from readers by email, which has been mostly positive.
