Mountain Pointe High School newspaper goes paperless
Journalism students at Ahwatukee Foothills’ Mountain Pointe High School have gone paperless.
They recently relaunched the school newspaper completely online to engage the student body and compete for viewership against other student publications in the Tempe Union High School District.
So far, it’s a success, the young journalists say.
“Me and Andrew (Nicla), we sat down with an idea for something like this that would cost a little more money and would be more creative, not just a template,” said Nik Pennington, managing editor for Voice of the Pride. “Now, I’m blown away. It’s been fantastic.”
Mountain Pointe senior Nicla,17, is editor-in-chief of Voice of the Pride, which relaunched Jan. 10 on a more visual and professional website.
Pennington, a 16-year-old junior, is “the backbone of VOTP’s new endeavor into becoming a completely online news source,” Mountain Pointe Principal Bruce Kipper said.
Nicla had wanted the change since he entered Mountain Pointe’s journalism program during his sophomore year.
He said the students in charge at the time were less effective at attracting readers because the products were less visual and did not reflect the interests of the student body.
Patti Duncan, Nicla’s journalism teacher at the time, loved his ideas, Nicla said, but the department did not have the budget to experiment.
Opportunity came when a new teacher arrived this school year after Duncan retired.
Krystin Pinckard, who graduated from Mountain Pointe in 2006, was heavily involved in creating the school’s yearbook and had taken a few journalism classes with Duncan.
She returned to head the pro- gram after graduating from Arizona State University in 2010 with a degree in secondary education.
Pinckard had Nicla and Pen- nington work on a business proposal for the new website, and, after some trial and error, they succeeded in creating the site and garnering more than 4,000 views since launch.
Nicla and Pinckard established a goal to publish 35 pieces a week, but they hadn’t reached it yet.
Nicla and Pennington say the challenge has been recruiting students to do so much work outside of class and learn to write for a publication.
Voice of the Pride covers school, local, national and worldwide news as well as sports, features and opinions.
“Our goal is tell stories of individual students,” said Nicla, who plans to attend ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “I like telling other peoples’ stories. It’s just giving a voice to the community and telling them why certain things matter.”