Carl Love: Temecula’s Chaparral High has nation’s best school newspaper

It’s a high school class, but some students put 20 hours a week into it.

On “put-to-bed night,” which happens twice a month, kids were at school until 9 p.m.

“It’s like an actual job,” said Katie Flack.

There’s just one thing — they don’t get paid.

The journalists for The Platinum Press, the student newspaper at Chaparral High School in Temecula, got something better than money recently. Theirs was named by the American Scholastic Press Association as the top high school newspaper in the country for schools with more than 2,000 students.

“It was, like, shocking,” said Flack, who was editor in chief with Annaliese Arnsten last year, for which the award was won. “I’m not even going to lie. I started crying.”

Ryan Leonhardi, the teacher who runs the newspaper class, said: “This is quite an honor and after six years of earning high marks, we have now been crowned as one of the nation’s very best.”

At a time when many professional newspapers are struggling, one run by high school students is doing remarkable things.

An online copy of the April 2020 issue testifies to the quality. But first, on top of a staff photo is this heading: “We have issues …”

It speaks to the traditional approach the newspaper takes. It definitely tackles issues of importance, as the pandemic stories in the edition prove. The Platinum Press also distributes paper copies to students.

The student writers can be quite sober.

Alexa Neal and Arnsten wrote a touching letter to last year’s seniors, the students who had their school year end in such a frustrating way, with everything disrupted by the pandemic.

“We may not have the senior year we had always dreamed of, but we have our health, and we have each other,” they wrote. “More than anything, we have an entire future ahead of us …”

Neal, editor-in-chief of the newspaper this year with Siena Soffere, said The Platinum Press is trying to appeal to all students. A student body is more than just the popular kids and big jocks on campus. The newspaper reflects that diversity, for example, with a piece by Ashanti McClendon on student tattoos.

“I think a lot of people look forward to reading it,” Neal said of the newspaper.

Both Neal, now a junior at Chaparral, and Flack, a freshman at Kent State University in Ohio, said the newspaper staff is close.

“We always call it a family,” Flack said, noting how much time the staff spends together. “We loved what we were doing.”

Flack has been so inspired by the high school newspaper experience that she is an English major in college and wants to be a professional writer.

“I’d love to be a journalist,” she said.

Neal is not sure what she wants to do in the future, though she’s thinking of becoming a doctor. Regardless, running a high school newspaper is certainly teaching her life skills.

This year’s newspaper is continuing despite the pandemic and the fact that Chaparral students are learning online, not in person. The first issue is due out at the end of this month, Neal said.

She’s also not ruling out being named the best newspaper in the country again.

“I hope I can live up to this,” she said of the big award. “I’m pretty confident. We can definitely work toward it.”

Whether they win again or not, they’ll be working hard.

Reach Carl Love at carllove4@yahoo.com

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