It has finally happened. Western Plains Unified School District 106 has a newspaper.
I was hired for this school year to start a full-fledged journalism program at Western Plains High School, and my students and I have been working hard to get things going.
Today I drove to Ness City to pick up the first issue of the brand-new student newspaper that is going to be covering the entire district every month.
It is called the Western Plains Cat Tracks, and here’s what it looked like:
The issue looks great, and the students are beyond excited to see all their hard work produce something tangible. What makes it even better is right away the students began receiving compliments.
As the newspaper adviser and journalism instructor, I couldn’t be more pleased with what they did, and I look forward to doing it again every month.
Cat Tracks is utilizing a tabloid format in order to not spend too much for printing while still giving the illusion the paper has more pages and more content.
The Hutchinson News is printing the paper for us. They deliver it to Ness City for me, and I pick it up from there.
The name, Cat Tracks, was derived from a student vote. There were several good options for the name, but this one was picked due, most likely, to the fact the school mascot is a Bobcat.
