Thanks for more Toop

Unleashed got a letter to the editor today! Check it out below:

To the editor — I am one of those avid, older generation Unleashed readers. Thank you for bringing back Drew Toop, one of the most talked-about veteran columnists in Unleashed history, for an encore column (Sept. 28). Since Toop moved on to Washington State University, La Salle High School contributor Andy Carroll has helped my Toop withdrawal symptoms.

I imagine fans like myself, led or feed this Tuesday section to our youthful family members with enthusiastic vigor.

Who knows? Maybe more of the original targeted teen audience will discover that newspapers are not for adults only.

RITA FISHER

West Valley

YH-R Unleashing Students’ Work Throughout Newspaper

By SARAH JENKINS
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

(Unleashed is) the equivalent of a teen who wants to be a doctor getting to work at a hospital for a couple of years. It’s hands-on. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And for teens who want to make a difference, it’s an opportunity worth taking. …

With the compilation of opportunities, of course, comes responsibility. It’s a responsibility to devote time and energy to your work and develop strong communication with your editor. But most importantly, it’s a responsibility to properly represent your generation. …

— Wyatt Kanyer, a two-year veteran of the Unleashed program and a 2008 Riverside Christian School graduate, attends Texas Christian University

I hope you’ve read the Unleashed section of this newspaper the last two Tuesdays and the special presentation on this page today.

It has been humbling.

Two Tuesdays ago, the 10th Unleashed team of teenagers from throughout the Yakima Valley introduced itself to you. Then last Tuesday, Unleashed team writers, photographers and illustrators gave you the first of a special package celebrating what we started out calling “the youth section” and what it has meant to local teens over the years.

The second part of that special package is presented on the rest of this page and on Pages 6-7D.

Unleashed taught me to swallow my fears and, at times, my pride. I was a timid 16-year-old when I started writing for the section in 2000. I hated asking questions in class. Even though I wanted to empower people by telling their stories, the idea of interviewing strangers horrified me.

Unleashed put my pains at ease, helping me set aside my feelings, particularly my fears.

— Eloísa Ruano González, a former Unleashed member and a 2002 Davis High School graduate, was hired as a full-time reporter at the Yakima Herald-Republic. She is now a reporter at the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel.

These columns and reminiscences come from just a small sample of the nearly 350 teenagers who have been members of the Unleashed team since the spring of 1999. Yet I have been moved by what an important role the opportunity played in their high school years, and how grateful they are — for the most part, anyway — in having had the opportunity to be a part of the Unleashed team and the Herald-Republic.

But today’s presentation marks not just the official beginning of Unleashed’s 10th year. It also marks a significant change for the team and for our news organization, and so requires an explanation.

From today on, the news stories, columns, photographs and illustrations produced by members of the Unleashed team will become part of the regular pages of the Herald-Republic, integrated throughout the paper’s regular news columns.

That means that beginning Tuesday, you will not find the Unleashed section in the Herald-Republic. Instead, throughout the week you’ll find Unleashed stories, photos and illustrations — perhaps in sports, perhaps in Home Front, perhaps in Business, perhaps even on the front page. All will be identified with the new Unleashed logo. They will also identify the Unleashed team member responsible by school, just as they do now.

The Unleashed team you met two weeks ago will continue to work with coordinator Adriana Janovich and student editor Alyssa Patrick (now a senior at Eisenhower High School in her fourth year on the team), and they will all meet here once a month to eat pizza, develop story ideas and learn more about being professional journalists.

Being a reporter means taking on a responsibility that not all teens have. Deadlines must be met and expectations must be followed. Interviews and photos have certain rules because it’s our job as writers and photographers to relay accurate news to the readers.

— Colleen Fontana, a junior at Davis High School, is in her third year on the Unleashed team

When I met with the team last week to explain this new approach to them, they were excited about the possibility — and a little afraid, I think, of losing some of their identity as a team. But we don’t intend for that to happen.

Instead of being a segregated section of the printed newspaper, we see them being a more integral part of the daily process. And we hope it will be as fun for you as readers as it should be for us as editors.

That’s just the printed paper, of course. Unleashed has also taken its first steps in a pretty exciting online adventure.

The 2008-09 team includes the first-ever Unleashed webmaster (or, as we call him, the Web kid). That’s Ike senior David Brinkman, who comes into the office a couple of days a week to work on unleashed.yakimablogs.com. It’s still a work in progress, but we expect it to grow and follow its own path, just like so many members of the Unleashed team have.

Journalism as a profession requires great intrigue and inquisitiveness. My role as a writer for Unleashed encouraged those innate qualities, so that I became a young woman of questions and curiosity. To this day, these are among my strongest qualities, and among my faults.

— Alexandra Auld, a 2004 Prosser High School graduate, attends the University of Washington

So what’s happening on Tuesdays?

With Unleashed stories, photos and illustrations integrated into the main news sections of the paper, we will be moving the Outdoors section from Thursday to Tuesday.

This will allow us to do a couple of things:

First, it will give more prominence to some great information presented every week by Outdoors editor Scott Sandsberry, other outdoors writers from throughout the Northwest and popular columns by local outdoors enthusiasts Rob Phillips and Ron Graham.

Second, it will allow us to condense the space devoted to sports on what is the slowest sports day of the week.

And you never know. You may even find an Unleashed article in the Outdoors & Sports section.
But just so you know not everything is positive …

One of the most talked about columnists in Unleashed’s tenure was Drew Toop, a four-year veteran of the team and a 2007 graduate of Davis High School, who now attends Washington State University.

When the call went out to Unleashed alumni for columns commemorating the 10th anniversary, Drew — as always — had something different to say. You can read his entire comment in his column at left, but here’s my favorite part:

I sense that features like Unleashed exist in part to encourage young people to get newspaper subscriptions. To write it openly: Unleashed is intended as a commercial.

The problem with this, however, is that it seems the most avid readers of the section are of older generations.

Thank you, Drew. I and the other older generations will remain avid readers.

• Sarah Jenkins is editor of the Yakima Herald-Republic. If you have a question or concern, you can reach her at 577-7703; P.O. Box 9668, Yakima WA 98909; or sjenkins@yakimaherald.com. You can also comment on this column in the “Inside the Newsroom” blog at editor.yakimablogs.com.

A Launch Pad for the Valley’s Young Talent

By DREW TOOP
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

I’ve only been off the team for, oh, how long has it been? A year and some months, I believe. My experiences on Unleashed, I think, have influenced me greatly.

However, I’ve already said as much in these pages, so I won’t write too long.

I remember my first Unleashed meeting, probably looking very, very young and wondering what I would make of myself during my time on the team, not knowing that I would reapply for further years nor write so much.

My younger self didn’t think about the possibility that Unleashed would be a fixture of my teenage years. In fact, when I had the opportunity to become a columnist, I was excited, but yet I remember not thinking much of it. I was floating, really.

During the time I was on the team, and since I have been off, the Yakima Herald-Republic, like almost all newspapers in the United States, has gotten smaller, because “nobody reads newspapers anymore.”

I sense that features like Unleashed exist in part to encourage young people to get newspaper subscriptions. To write it openly: Unleashed is intended as a commercial.

The problem with this, however, is that it seems the most avid readers of the section are of older generations.

I know that many young people do read Unleashed, and that stories and columns from it are often studied in high school English classes. But it seems that overall, the section has failed to do what was intended, simply because it could never do what was intended.

The decline of the daily is going to reach its inevitable end about 20 years from now, if not earlier.

What good, then, is Unleashed?

Just because youth pages won’t save newspapers is no reason to ignore or remove them, especially one of such quality as ours. Unleashed serves a much more important purpose in that it gathers together a good sampling of the next generation of writers, artists and photographers and pushes their skills forward.

It is the launch pad for the Yakima Valley’s young talent. Let’s face it: There are very few cultural venues in the Valley, especially ones easily accessible to young people.

Unleashed helps fill a void.

It also builds friendships. I am especially grateful to Unleashed for introducing me to one of the best people in the world, my good friend Desiree Pebeahsy, a 2008 White Swan High School graduate.

We’re both kids from the launch pad, and we both owe it to the page for the encouragement it gave us. I can only hope that others will say the same for some years to come.

— Drew Toop, a four-year veteran of the Unleashed team and a 2007 graduate of Davis High School, attends Washington State University.