By Thomas McHale
Cherry Hill High School East junior Claire Ding sat in class waiting for the shelter-in-place drill to end. After almost an hour, it became clear that this wasn’t just a drill. An announcement directed students to the football field, after which they boarded buses bound for Cherry Hill West.
Rumors were flying among students about why they were being evacuated. As a student journalist and print features editor for Eastside, the school’s student media publication, Ding felt she had to do something.
“We were like, okay, we have to figure out what’s happening,” she said. “Because the fact that everyone was basically just getting their information from what random people were posting online felt wrong.”
On the bus, Ding consulted with her coeditors, Nico Spatucci and Gina Park. The three student journalists decided to draft an article for publication on Eastside as the event unfolded.
Once they arrived at West, they found Principal Daniel Finkle, who was being bombarded with questions from anxious students.
“He was willing to talk to us because we were doing it for Eastside,” Ding said.
She and her coeditors sat in a corner of the gym and drafted their story. It was published online before students returned home. More than 2,000 people viewed the article.
This focus on serving the school community is one reason Garden State Scholastic Press Association named Claire Ding to the inaugural New Jersey Journalism All-Star Team.
Greg Gagliardi is an English teacher at Cherry Hill East and the adviser of Eastside. As past president of the Garden State Scholastic Press Association and State Director for the Journalism Education Association, he knows the state of scholastic journalism in New Jersey and its potential.
“More schools in our state really need to use these tools that are available to them to do live online reporting,” he said. “You don’t need a lot of experience to be able to do an online story. It’s developing that mindset of, this needs to be reported on.”
Scholastic journalism comes in many different forms
In New Jersey, journalism programs range from large, prestigious programs like Eastside, which has multiple course levels, 29 editorial board members and about 100 contributing students, to small extracurricular programs.
The 10 students named 2025 All Stars came from public and private school programs of various sizes. They were honored for their dedication to serving their school and local communities, their courage in challenging their audience and in covering controversial topics and their efforts to share their skills and knowledge with others.
Delaware Valley Regional High School in rural Hunterdon County has about 700 students. English teacher Brian Smith took over teaching the sole journalism class and advising The Delphi, Del Val’s student media, in 2019. That first year, he had 12 students contribute to a new online version of the newspaper they launched. Now, The Delphi has about 40 active members and another 40 students who contribute some content. The school now offers four levels of journalism classes.
Student media serve the local community in news deserts
All-Star and The Delphi Editor-in-Chief Gianna Roberts takes pride in The Delphi’s engagement with the local community.
“We’ve been really working on writing some more locally appealing articles,” she said.
Near the end of the last school year, they published a piece on a Target opening that caught the attention of readers from the local community.
And while a new department store opening might not seem like an important event for a scholastic publication to cover, the lack of local news coverage in rural areas has changed the audience for some student media.
“I’m most proud that they jumped into the story,” Smith said. “They realized it was happening. They have the skills to cover these events and lo and behold, they’re now inside the store taking pictures of things before the public sees it. They’re interviewing the mayor of Flemington. They covered the whole thing and had the piece out in 24 hours, ahead of professional media.”
Del Val’s student media also has expanded its use of podcasting. Abigail Eckert was podcast editor and managing editor last year and presented sessions on podcasting to students at the Garden State Scholastic Press Association’s (GSSPA) Fall Conference at Rutgers University.
“We want to make sure that if people are doing it, it’s done well,” she said. “Instead of just, I’m going to grab a mic and talk, and it’s just going to sound like something interesting to me, but not to other people. A lot of people don’t have the attention span to read a full article, but you can put on a podcast episode while you’re driving, or while you’re doing chores, or while you’re cleaning, and you’re still getting your story.”
Edison High School’s student media, The Eagle Eye, also has worked to improve how it serves its audience. For All-Star and Editor-in-Chief Ishani Bakshi, that meant creating a more news-centered publication.
“Journalism is how communities learn who they are,” she said. “So just being loud isn’t enough, you have to matter.”
Bakshi not only led her publication in making these changes but also presented a session, “Amplifying the Community Voice: Civics and Community-Focused Journalism,” at GSSPA’s fall conference to encourage other students to focus more on their audience’s needs.
Similarly, Northern Highlands Regional High School’s Elena McCrossin, editor-in-chief of The Fling, was named an All-Star for her work to improve and reorganize how the publication operated.
This is what All Stars do. They take their publications seriously, work hard to produce content that informs, entertains and engages their audience and train their peers to do the same.
New Voices protections lead to meaningful content
New Jersey is one of 18 states that have passed student press freedom legislation. The New Voices Law of New Jersey, passed in 2021, enables students at public high schools and colleges to choose the content of their publications without interference from school administrators or staff.
All-Star students used these protections to challenge school policies, cover controversial topics and create content that they believe best serves their audience.
All-Star Chloe Ren from Cherry Hill East wrote an opinion piece about take-home tests undermining student learning that challenged a widespread academic practice and sparked conversation amongst teachers and students. Similarly, fellow All-Star Landon Schuster challenged grading policies and loopholes in online courses at Cherry Hill East.
Moorestown Friends High School student and All-Star Ali Sabir wrote about an anti-Semitic incident at the middle school for his school’s student media, WordsWorth.
“The article sparked critical conversations around anti-Semitism, hate symbols and the need for a more inclusive environment,” he said. The school devoted two assembly periods and an advisory period for reflection and discussion about the incident.
Other All-Stars worked to ensure press rights for students who are not currently protected. Zahara Chowdhury, editor-in-chief of Lyndhurst High School’s The Lighthouse, is working to add protections for private schools to the legislation. Moorestown Friends High School’s Livia Kam, editor-in-chief of WordsWorth, is working to get New Voices legislation passed in Pennsylvania.
All-Star Teams honor the best and inspire others
The 10 students named as All-Stars by the GSSPA illustrate some of the best work produced by New Jersey’s journalism programs. They were honored during an awards session at the GSSPA’s fall conference, where they received a certificate and a varsity letter.
The GSSPA works with New Jersey scholastic media advisers and students to support the growth and improvement of their programs through conferences and online content.
“Hopefully, by having an All-State team, when people read stories about who was picked, it’ll inspire them to do similar types of stories, because it doesn’t take a lot of time or any money to do it. It just takes initiative,” Gagliardi said.
Thomas McHale is a journalism and English teacher at Hunterdon Central Regional High School. He is a board member of the Garden State Scholastic Press Association. He can be reached at tmchale@hcrhs.org.