Lydia Gerety said something recently that makes the heart of a longtime journalist melt.
“I was planning my grad party, making like grad invites,” the Ankeny High School senior started, “and I was, like, ‘What do I even put on the back?’ And I put the biggest accomplishment was: being editor-in-chief of the paper.”
Gerety, 18, was referring to The Talon, her school’s award-winning student newspaper. “I had cared so much about it,” she said. “And this year, especially, I was able to have just so much pride in my staff because they were understanding the passion and everything I was working for. It’s, like, it’s fun.”
I write this as a longtime member of the Iowa High School Press Association (IHSPA) board of directors, so I have a bias about youth like Gerety because high school students like her are impressive. They help produce a newspaper, yearbook, website, social media, video and audio to reflect their school community while also engaging in extracurricular activities, achieving high academic standards and, hopefully, having some fun with a social life.
That is why the IHSPA created, for the first time this year, an All-State team for scholastic journalism. Members of this team exhibit the best qualities that a student can put into action as a journalist, putting their work out there for all to see, absorb and embrace, but also to criticize — because what would our world be without critics?
Joining Gerety — whose stories include a piece on concerns parents have about equal access to education in Iowa — on the team are Evelyn Kraber, 18, of Iowa City West High School; Lily Rantanen, 18, of Iowa City High School; and Brooklyn Berumez, 18, Jay McOmar Esmael, 17, and Alyssa Muheljic, 18, all of Waterloo West High School. Waterloo West did not even have a high school program until four years ago, yet Berumez became the third Wahawk in a row to be named the IHSPA’s Journalist of the Year.
“I think a big thing is, like, believing in yourself,” Muheljic said about getting into high school journalism. She is the design and social media editor for the Wahawk yearbook and feature and multimedia editor for the Insider. An energetic daughter of Bosnian immigrants whose first language was Bosnian before she learned English in school, she plans to attend Iowa State University this coming fall and study psychology.
The Iowa City West’s West Side Story and City High’s The Little Hawk have been winning national recognition for years. Kraber and Rantanen could step into legacy programs and build on the excellence for which their publications are known.
But Ankeny’s program is in only its third year. That Ankeny and Waterloo West were willing to start journalism programs at a time when school districts in Iowa seek ways to cut spending brings hope that educators see the value in teaching interviewing, research, discernment, fact-checking, writing, photography, graphic arts, editing and story presentation skills.
They learn leadership skills, too. Ankeny’s Gerety is a prime example. She said she focused on her staff in her editor’s position. “I covered an ICE protest with one of our reporters, and there was, like, an anti-protest across the street,” she said. “And he just walked up to them and started talking to them. I asked him, ‘Hey, how’d you feel comfortable doing that?’ He’s, like, ‘Well, I just was curious what they had to say.’ I’m like, ‘That’s exactly why you’re part of this team.’”
And then there is Berumez, the Journalist of the Year heading to the University of Iowa and The Daily Iowan, where she will be Gerety’s colleague. She always has been shy, lacking confidence, she said.
Journalism not only brought her out of her cocoon, it saved her.
“From having experience and having stuck through it, and having been on both yearbook and news, it’s really taught me the lesson,” Berumez said, “that everybody has a story. Everybody deserves to have their story be told.”
Sometimes, they do not have the means to tell that story, Berumez said. She and all of her colleagues on this Hall of Fame team have shown they are willing to help give voice to those who otherwise would not have that opportunity.
We all should celebrate that.
Lyle Muller is a longtime Iowa journalist who, in retirement, continues to advise Grinnell Colleege’s Scarlet & Black student newspaper. You may read his Substack column, “Lyle Muller Doesn’t Have a Fancy Column Title,” at lylemuller.substack.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: New All-State team showcases Iowa high school journalists | Opinion
Reporting by Lyle Muller, Guest columnist / Des Moines Register
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