Last week, Barrow Journal photographer Jessica Brown and I had the chance to speak to Derek Hon’s journalism class at Winder-Barrow High School.
First, let me credit WBHS principal Al Darby for continuing to make this class available to students. With classes of this nature, you often wonder do some students sign up simply to take what they perceive to be an “easy class” or do they have a legitimate interest in the subject.
Based on the questions the students presented to Jessica and myself, I firmly believe there are some potential journalists in the group. Mr. Hon does a great job with the class and our paper has been fortunate to serve as something of a mentor to it.
One of the questions presented centered on how I thought the future of journalism, newspapers in particular, would be. It’s a great question because the role of newspapers has certainly changed. More than 20 years ago when I was in high school (and developed my interest in journalism as a career), there weren’t 24-hour news stations, no one my age knew what the Internet was and big daily newspapers had not imposed self-inflicted wounds giving away their content for free.
I admit that larger dailies such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution may be in trouble for the long term. Who knows if there will even be a print edition in the next two decades. While, to me at least, it would be a tragic thing to happen, papers of this nature are focusing more on their web editions it seems than the print one.
Papers like the Barrow Journal, however, are different. We continue to print news strictly related to Barrow County that you aren’t going to find anywhere else. While the papers from Atlanta and Athens roll into town when something “big” happens, we are here day in and day out, offering coverage you won’t find anywhere else. And you know what? That’s the way we like it.
Practically all of our staff lives in Barrow County. We want this to be a good, safe place to live. We have a vested interest in what happens here. Once a big story dies down, we’re still here.
We are the ones at the local high school football games. We are the ones who attend all the government and municipality meetings, even when nothing exciting happens. We are the ones who print engagement and wedding announcements. We offer views from columnists who actually know where Barrow County is and have actually been inside its boundaries.
Barrow County is what we do. So while many larger papers in the state and across the country continue to struggle (for a host of reasons which go beyond the economy), there will always be, I believe, a place for the hometown publications like the Barrow Journal. It’s why we are continuing to grow despite the recession.
We are the one who informed residents of the controversy involving the voting list for the City of Winder. We are the one who keeps you up-to-date on Winder-Barrow High School and Apalachee High School athletics. We are the one who lets you know without fear or favor what your elected officials are doing.
Print journalism has changed since I took an interest beyond that of a reader in the late 1980s. It’s nice seeing high school students today showing a similar interest. It remains to be seen how far any of the students we spoke to last week go in journalism, but the fact they have enough of an interest to take a class on it says a great deal in the year 2011.
Jessica, who was heavily involved with the class during her days at WBHS, and I both appreciate the invitation to speak and hope perhaps we made the fire for community journalism a little hotter for the students in Mr. Hon’s class. It was our pleasure to do so.
Chris Bridges is editor of the Barrow Journal. You can reach him at cbridges@barrowjournal.com.
It's good to see kids getting into journalism. There will always be room for it, even in a screen-oriented world.