“Mixed among the stories about long lines in the school cafeteria and student government news, the best high school journalists take on the big stories, too,” writes Wendy Wallace, director of the Poynter high school journalism project, on Poynteronline. “See how the nation’s high school journalists covered Katrina and its effects on people’s lives and how the story resonates with young people nationwide.”
Wallace’s article links to a Ball State University publication for journalism educators that explores high schools’ coverage of Katrina, including an online gallery of student reporting on the storm and its aftermath.
Students “didn’t just recap what the big news outlets were telling them,” a graduate assistant in the journalism department at Ball State told Wallace. “They went out and found the local angle and showed how an event hundreds or thousands of miles away can impact them.”