IHSPA Insider

By Chris Pearcy, IHSPA Executive Board Secretary

LHS Magpie Adviser, Logansport High School

The professional journalism world is forever changing. Thus, the scholastic world does the same. Whether it’s technological advancements, shifting audience trends, or changing graduation requirements, it can be difficult to keep up and stay relevant in our corner of the greater journalism universe. Below are some suggestions that may help.

1. Unite and brand the program

With expanding storytelling options to provide people with news, there are so many different kinds of publications that we can create within our schools. Just at Logansport High School, we have a yearbook (Tattler), online news website (Magpie), broadcast (The Felix Frame), and soon a sports media program. Plus, we have multiple social media accounts. Potential recruits can find it overwhelming to know where to start, which publication does what, or even that they are connected.

Branding all your publications under one umbrella simplifies this. This year, we created Felix Media. We renamed each of our student media courses with the Felix Media branding. So, Advance Writing (yearbook) became Felix Media: Yearbook, while Student Publications (newspaper) became Felix Media: Newspaper. Next year, we will add Felix Media: Sports Media & PR. As we began recruiting this year, it allowed us to create recruiting materials and better course descriptions to help students understand how each publication differs, but is also interconnected, which helps students better understand their options when making a choice. On top of this, we’ve created a unified logo and t-shirts that each staff member wears to major events they are covering.

Branding creates a steady feeling of unity between each publication and encourages the sharing of resources, like photos or coordinating social media. Student staff and their abilities come and go. Working together could even mean having a strong staff from one publication aid another staff by providing inspiration/mentoring. The community sees a group of individuals wearing the same shirts at events, doing journalistic work, which gives them a better sense of the breadth of the program. When the program is marketing to potential staff members, they can see it as the larger journalism entity that it is.

2. Explore course possibilities

The state of Indiana changed the graduate requirements for the Class of 2029. Furthermore, the Indiana Department of Education continues to define what exactly all this means, leaving counselors and administrators scrambling to figure out what the Class of 2029 and beyond high school schedules will actually be. The new communication credit does offer some hope since most journalism classes fit it nicely. However, it also has to compete with several other one-semester graduation requirements. Many traditional core subjects like math, science, social studies, and English are also very front-loaded in students’ first two years of high school. At Logansport and other schools, this has initially manifested as a significant drop in students enrolled in our beginning Journalism course. Getting students early during their freshman or sophomore year matters. It allows them to develop over several years into future leaders of the publication staff. So, how do we try to keep a steady flow of new staff members?

Explore creating more pathways to your program. The IDOE Course Companion Document shows that our traditional courses of Journalism (1080), Digital Media (1084), and Student Media (1086) can be considered for both the communication and English credits. Now, while some of this is ultimately up to how your school administrators and counselors view what can fit what graduation requirement, this does give us some room to explore new courses. Next year, Logansport is adding a Sports Media/PR class (1086) and a Sports Journalism class (1080) to go along with our current journalism/student media courses, expanding our selection from three to five classes. Each will count toward the communication credit. So, five of the six courses that students at Logansport can take to fulfill that graduation requirement run through the journalism program. We are even discussing with our administration the possibility of student media fulfilling the work-based learning requirements in the future. The point is, now is a great time to explore different possibilities. Check out some of the course catalogs from other schools for ideas.

• Columbus North High School: Course Catalog (pgs. 55-57)

• Hamilton Southeastern High School Department of Communication & Media Arts: Course Catalog (pgs. 66-69)

• Lake Central High School Communicative Arts: Course Catalog (pgs. 58-60)

• Southport High School English Department: Course Catalog (pgs. 15-21)

3. Advertise and recruit

Students have to know you exist and what you do before they can figure out if they want to join. Start before they even get to high school. This year, we spent a whole day at our junior high school recruiting. Our yearbook and newspaper students planned activities and spent each class period talking to almost every 8th-grade student. The staff filled each class period with a brief presentation about the program and station rotations. Students got to use cameras, write headlines, complete yearbook spread layouts, etc. Plus, they walked away with a flyer that listed each Felix Media course they could sign up for. This was coordinated to be right before 8th-graders started signing up for their freshman courses.

It is important to get to students early before anyone else does. Some schools, like North Central High School, even do a summer camp for middle schoolers. Others have nights when they invite students to be a junior journalist at a sporting event. They get to hang out with a high school journalist and take some pictures. Make announcements at the junior high or find ways to get your publications in front of those students. Much of this can be applied at the high school level as well. Find ways to talk to the current freshmen and sophomores classes face-to-face. Try to make sure every student knows that you exist and why they should join.

If you have an idea for a blog on a journalistic topic, lesson, or experience you'd like to write about, would love to have you as a guest author one month. Submit your blog proposal here, and we will be in touch.

Don't forget to register for the Indiana High School Journalism Convention. It is January 30, 2026. The event is a great resource for journalism students and advisors that features educational programming for all aspects of scholastic journalism, including workshops and a chance for students to network with other journalism students from across the state. Register here and read about this year's keynote speaker Chuck Todd below!

Chuck Todd is a renowned political analyst, Host of The Chuck ToddCast, a weekly podcast offering in-depth interviews with political figures and experts, and Head of Politics & Host of “Sunday Night with Chuck Todd" for the Noosphere App. A six-time Emmy® Award-winner, Todd was NBC News’s chief Political Analyst and moderator of Meet the Press from 2014 to 2023. He also hosted Meet the Press NOW, a daily show on NBC News NOW, bringing timely political analysis to a digital audience.

Known for his sharp insight and encyclopedic knowledge of politics, Todd has co-moderated multiple presidential debates, including the record-breaking 2019 and 2020 Democratic debates. He previously served as NBC News’s chief White House Correspondent and hosted The Daily Rundown on MSNBC.

Todd is the author of two books and has contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. He teaches how Washington works as the inaugural Scholar-in-Residence for The University of Southern California’s Capital Campus, in Washington, D.C.. Todd resides in Arlington, VA, with his wife, Kristian, and their two children.

Check out Journalism Education Association's SmugMug page. This great resources features hundreds of photos from the JEA National Student Media Contests over the years. Use it to help teacher your students the different types of photos they can seek and how these photographers got the shot. The website shows what student journalist can achieve.

We want to highlight and share great journalism resources in our monthly newsletters. Use this form to suggest lessons, curriculum, classroom ideas, places to find resources, etc. in a future newsletter. Basically, please share anything you think would help your fellow advisors.

Adviser: Lauren Wagner

Submit the best of your student's work here. Every month we'd like to highlight great journalism from IHSPA journalists. We'd like to high light a variety of journalism, including print, yearbook, broadcast, writing, photojournalism, podcasts, etc. So, keep submitting your student's work throughout the year!