Many students may wonder why the familiar stacks of the New Trier News aren’t showing up in their adviseries every Friday. 

It isn’t because we stopped reporting the news. 

It’s because the senior leadership team of administrators decided to cut the student print publications, including LOGOS, Calliope, the Sophomore Journal, the Political Journal, the Near True News, and the New Trier News. 

The team’s decision was based on environmental factors and the “increasing digital trends of journalism,” according to Principal Denise Dubravec. While they are still deliberating how many times the News can publish a print issue–four or eight– neither is enough for us.  We can’t speak for those other publications, but we are disappointed. 

We will continue to publish articles on our website newtriernews.org, but the News is a student-run newspaper, so the decision on printing our work should be our choice. This raises serious concerns for the future of all student journalism at New Trier, since the print papers give all students at our school a chance to stay connected with our community. 

We hope to continue advocating for the distribution of print newspapers. Although journalism as a field is becoming more digital, we believe that at New Trier, the print issues are necessary for sharing stories and building unity among the student body at both campuses. Naturally, if there is a copy of the newspaper in advisery, students will engage with the material. Publishing articles strictly online will reduce readership since many students don’t yet know the newspaper continues to exist online or how to access it.

Transitioning the student body to this new way of accessing the News takes time, and we haven’t been given that time.

Our staff knows the importance of local journalism and of providing our readers with relevant information about our school. Student journalism has been an integral part of New Trier for over one hundred years, and we are dedicated to keeping it that way. 

We also recognize that a significant portion of the News’s student readers are most familiar with reading the print papers. Students enjoy sitting down in advisery with a donut or bagel on Friday and catching up on the latest New Trier community news by reading the paper. By forcing us to only publish online, the administration is shutting out New Trier’s primary reader base, the New Trier students themselves.

In the real world of journalism, the decision to curb print runs is a financial decision to adjust to changing reader and advertiser habits. Here, the decision is being made by the administration, though it is not involved in any part of the News production. The decision to switch from print journalism to online-only should be made by us, on our own terms, when we are ready. And we aren’t ready yet.

While all of this was devastating news for us, we will continue to build our online presence. While we may not print as much as we would like, we are dedicated to creating bolder online content. We will continue to deliver purposeful news, compelling spotlights on classmates, updated information on sports, and provocative opinion articles. 

We thank you for the support as we adjust to a new routine. Keep up with the ins and outs of the school community by checking our website and social media, and looking out for occasional print papers in your adviseries. 

We can promise that we will continue to work hard to report reliable, important, and relevant news for our community.