Fine(d) Print

“What is print?”

This is the question posed to me by Greendale High School English teacher, Amy Hutter.

“Is it this?” she asked while picking up a pile of papers from her desk. “Is it a newspaper or magazine? Or is it on there?” she pointed to the computer.

Hutter has taught in Greendale for 11 years now, but her idea of print has not changed much from her days as a student.

“It’s the written word,” she said. “It’s tangible.”

The tangible world of journalism has been taken for a spin and turned upside down with the advancements of recent technology. Although the definitions of a newspaper reporter or magazine writer have changed, many journalistic style standards are still upheld and taught in schools. Even writing styles, like the inverted pyramid where the most important information is placed in the first couple paragraphs, stayed the same.

“I still teach the inverted pyramid style from lead down,” Hutter said. “They still do worksheets on style at the beginning of the semester and learn about the ‘who, what, when, where and why’.”

Technical advancements have made sending the paper to the printing company a much easier task.

“We used to have to print out all the pages and highlight what we wanted in color and physically take that to the printer’s,” Hutter said. “Now we just choose the color from the palette and upload our stories onto their website.”

In the room where the award-winning monthly issues of Pioneer Outlook and weekly issues of Second Sight are created, three rows of flat screen Macs have replaced the clunky desktop PCs from my days there.

InDesign has ousted Quark as the program used by students to design their page. This has come a long way from the mid 1990s when cutting and pasting pictures to a blank page was how a page’s design was put together.

Texting and emailing have become the new way to interview people.

Wait. Stop the presses. No, that can’t be right.

“We spend three or four days at the beginning of the semester on interviewing alone, but many students still text or Facebook whoever they are interviewing,” Hutter said. “It’s hard to get kids to interview without using texting as a method.”

Although she acknowledged some benefits to interviewing via email, Hutter said not learning how to interview someone face-to-face could be slightly detrimental for future journalists.

“Lots of teachers and administrators actually prefer to be interviewed by email because that way they won’t be misquoted,” she said. “It’s also easier to get ahold of some of them that way because they always have their computers with them and get can get back to us quickly.”

But facial expressions, body language, the tone of the voice and the ability to ask follow up questions are all things that the reporter misses out on in a digital interview she said.

“It’s a little bit of a lost art,” Hutter said.

Another seemingly lost art has been interest in the investigative hard news stories. Hutter attributes this to the immediacy and overwhelming availability of sources like TMZ, E!NEWS, and other celebrity sites.

“Even though people don’t read as many newspapers, people still now more than ever need information, but the subject matter has gotten lighter,” she said.

The lighter content gives page design a more critical role.

“You have to make the page look interesting or people won’t read it,” Hutter said.

So what does this mean for the future of these publications that have remained in the top two spots of the Northeastern Wisconsin Scholastic Press Association and the Kettle Moraine Press Association? Not too much for right now.

“I want my students to be able to write about what they care about,” Hutter said.

A shift back to hard news may happen, but in the meantime, these student reporters are treated as they would be in the real world with accountability for story ideas, accuracy and deadlines.

“Be the go-getter,” she said. “You can’t be afraid to go after the story. Our quest for knowledge won’t go away. It may not be on paper, but it will be there.”