A Look Back, a Look Forward

By ALYSSA PATRICK
EISENHOWER HIGH SCHOOL

It was 1998 when a somewhat unconventional idea began to grow in the newsroom at the Yakima Herald-Republic.

Together, an education reporter and a copy editor approached the big desk of Sarah Jenkins, the newspaper’s top editor, to discuss its origin: low readership among young adults.

To fix this problem, the pair wanted to do something a bit fantastical: Develop a section of the newspaper that’s reported, photographed and illustrated by teens for teens.

Jenkins said no. The proposal had the “potential to be a huge time-sucker,” she said.

But Colleen Pohlig and Jeff Garretson, the reporter and the copy editor, persisted until Jenkins, who’s still the top editor at the Herald-Republic, finally said yes.

And thus Unleashed was born.

Pohlig, who left the Herald-Republic for a job at The Seattle Times in 2000, came up with the original idea.

“She needed someone to discuss the idea with, and to help get the management to buy into it, so that’s where I came in,” said Garretson, now the news editor at the Herald-Republic.

The pair attended a conference for youth editors, hosted by what is now the Youth Editorial Alliance, in Spokane in 1998. Afterward, Garretson said, they felt confident in their ability to build a youth section that was equal to, if not better than, those they saw at the conference.

They were so revved up that they wanted to start the section right away. Jenkins made them wait a year.

“In that year, we were able to advertise a ton,” Garretson said. “Colleen went to several different schools to talk to English and journalism classes. She did a good job building a buzz.

“We also were able to talk to the people we had met at the conference, which allowed us to sidestep all the potential pitfalls a program like this could have,” he said. “Without that first year, Unleashed may not have lasted very long.”

When it finally came time to choose the first team, Garretson and Pohlig had to wade through 132 applications from eager students hoping to be a part of the program.

“That was the biggest challenge,” Garretson said. “We had hoped for around 50 or 60 applications, so we were overwhelmed by the large number.”

They had the difficult job of selecting just more than 30 students.

“But in the end,” Garretson said, “that first team really set the mood the next 10 years.”

The co-founders of Unleashed weren’t sure what to expect from the group of young people. In fact, Pohlig listed some of her worries in a column she wrote introducing the new section: “What if they didn’t have any ideas? What if they didn’t like each other?” she wrote.

But when the team met for the first time, the coordinators realized there had been no need to fret: “They truly jelled,” Pohlig wrote.

The 27 reporters and seven photographers had plenty of ideas, got along with each other, and ended up producing a section that earned second place in the “Rookie of the Year” division of an awards program, sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America, to honor teen sections at newspapers nationwide.

Unleashed has been thriving for the past 10 years. Its students have been individually recognized at the national level for their stories, columns, photos and artwork. In recent years, Unleashed has placed second and third for “Program Excellence” by the NAA. It is currently ranked No. 1 in the country.
The next 10 years, however, are going to look much different. With the rising cost of newsprint and the popularity of the Internet as a news source, the newspaper industry has been shifting and adapting. As a result, Jenkins said, newspapers have to re-evaluate their programs, decide what is and what isn’t a luxury.

“Teen sections and the people who run them are fairly easy to cut for many newspapers,” Jenkins said, adding that while teen sections are considered a luxury, the Herald-Republic values Unleashed and considers the section a valuable asset.

“We all believe that we have a commitment to give teens a taste of journalism,” she said. “Whether or not they end up in the field, this experience makes you a better media consumer. It gives you exposure to something you wouldn’t normally be exposed to.”

Still, Unleashed became a topic of discussion during recent meetings at the Herald-Republic regarding how the newspaper can continue to adapt to changes brought on by the Web and the rising cost of newsprint. Editors decided Unleashed, along with a few other sections, needs to be reworked.

Beginning Tuesday, Unleashed will no longer appear as a weekly section in the newspaper. Instead, students’ work will be scattered throughout the regular paper. Their contributions could run in the Northwest Life, Faith, Sports or Home Front sections, even Page One.

It is a drastic change, Garretson said, with exciting new prospects. The Unleashed staff can now “try to get stories and photos into production more than one day of the week,” he said.

“It will also help make another attempt to get young adults to pick up the paper. Maybe an Unleashed story they’re reading in Home Front will be next to another story they end up reading that they would not have seen before.”

In a way, the Unleashed staff will be working more like the Herald-Republic staff, competing for front page and other space in the newspaper, Garretson said. The change will also encourage the Unleashed staff to write stories that are more relevant to a general newspaper audience, he said.

“Unleashed is losing its stand-alone identity,” Jenkins said. “And I am sad about that, but at the same time I’m excited about being able to use the section’s strong content throughout the paper. This is an opportunity for stories to be in places they’ve never been before.”

Part of Unleashed’s new format includes responding to the newspaper industry’s push to the Web. Unleashed launched a blog at the end of May, and named its first webmaster — David Brinkman, a 17-year-old senior at Eisenhower High School — about the same time.

“My plan is to make the news more teen-friendly,” Brinkman said. “I’ll be creating a MySpace and Facebook page because teens are more comfortable reading information that way.”

Brinkman will also work on making Unleashed’s blog more interactive, adding polls in addition to the comment option that’s already available. He will work closely with Herald-Republic Web producer TJ Mullinax and Unleashed coordinator Adriana Janovich. Janovich, a Herald-Republic reporter since 2000, has coordinated the Unleashed section for the past six years.

Unleashed has shifted with each of its four coordinators and 10 teams of students who have moved through its pages. Now, it will shift again to accommodate trends in the newspaper industry.

Unleashed is moving into a new phase of its existence. But its foundation will always be the same: A strong core of young people ready to unleash their voices.