Top spot is demanding, but still rewarding

EICs+Izzy+Cavazzoni+and+Courtney+Kushnir+look+back+on+their+time+with+The+Inkblot.

EICs Izzy Cavazzoni and Courtney Kushnir look back on their time with The Inkblot.

By GINA TALAMO and MARY SAYDAH

 

When we started our time at The Inkblot, our first project was hot-gluing Santa hats onto cardboard cut-outs of bowling pins. As unknowing freshmen, this was our first impression of the paper: Mrs. Mulshine assigning us to advertise for the paper’s yearly Bowl-a-Thon fundraiser.

Gluing white paper onto cardboard that random Sunday, we didn’t know that The Inkblot would be so  important in the rest of our CHS careers.

As freshmen and staff writers, we both developed an appreciation for journalism. Telling stories that were going on around the school was rewarding for both of us, and it allowed us to be more involved with the school. When we were chosen as editors in our sophomore year (Mary in features, Gina in news), we began to think more seriously about what it would mean to run the newspaper.

What it meant was this: copy-edits, deadlines and weekly editors’ meetings full of opinions, ideas and talks about donuts. That’s not to mention hunting down photos, dummying pages, fortifying the website and dealing with First Amendment law.

It meant staying after school for hours at a time to finish laying out the paper and making Tyler get Chipotle. It meant raising money to give out a free newspaper to the school.

More than anything, our time in charge of the paper meant finding the untold stories in a small school. This included fun stories, like our snow and coffee centerspreads, and serious topics, like our mental health and National Coming Out Day centerspreads. Our unofficial goal was to find out what issues were important to the school and tell those stories.

Writing about serious matters was no easy task. We knew going in that it would be challenging, but we never imagined the extent to which we would have to reprioritize, stay neutral and still get our points across.

As difficult as these spreads were, we encourage our staff – and the rest of the school – not to be discouraged from writing about what’s important. Covering important topics wasn’t easy, but it was worthwhile to know our stories created better dialogues.

We didn’t plan to kick off our high school journalism careers with Santa hat-clad bowling pins, nor did we expect to uncover so many controversial issues, but we’re glad we did. Write on CHS.