Beginnings of a Community Newspaper

by Susan Bonthron, January 1997

The Gazette has survived and thrived since Susan wrote this piece in 1997 and is now in its 10th year.
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One grim March day a few years back I walked away from Guilford Town Meeting in tears. I was overwhelmed with frustration because the town had become divided against itself and at odds with the school, and no one really understood the "other" point of view. It was an ugly meeting, full of frustration and anger and bad feeling. I felt the town had lost touch with its own identity as a place that like it or not had changed and was no longer working together for its own good.

Some months later, during the period when I was teaching creative writing at Guilford Central School, I began having conversations with Joe Brooks about ways to publish kids writing. He loaned me a book called Foxfire, which I read with growing interest. It told the story of a school in southern Appalachia whose students had become deeply involved in discovering and recording knowledge about their own community its people, its folklore, its history; in short, its identity and theirs. The act of discovery changed the students and the community forever. They became partners in a learning enterprise in which they both take pride. When Joe and I began to talk about a community newspaper, we were thinking of the Foxfire model. The paper would be assembled by Guilford students, and it would be about and for the town of Guilford a way for the town to know itself again, a forum for airing multiple points of view as well as local history, helpful information about goings on in the community, and interviews conducted by the students with volunteers from the town who could tell us about themselves and the town's history.

Six issues have been mailed in the past year and a half. In putting the paper together, the kids gain valuable hands-on experience that will help them in every academic and social arena. They work as a team, meet deadlines, conduct interviews, deal with the public, and learn to write and edit stories for a wide (and real) audience. They are also learning (along with many townsfolk!) how to use the technology that produces the paper: real work experience in a friendly setting. Not least of all, they are learning the importance of grammar, style, and content in a context where the consequences of success and failure are immediate and real.

It isn't easy. There is tension at deadline time when stories aren't finished or properly edited, or the computer eats the latest version of the newspaper file, or people have to give up entire weekends when they'd rather be doing something else to make sure the paper gets "put to bed." But the rewards are monumental. I have been told repeatedly by Guilfordites of all ages and backgrounds how much they look forward to the next issue. Now Guilford has its own mouthpiece, its own forum for public debate and information sharing. The school has a way to tell the town about itself, and most importantly to me, the townspeople have a way to share with each other and the school their own stories.

There will still be tension at Town Meeting. But I'd venture to say that because of the Guilford Gazette, there will no longer be so little understanding of the "other" point of view. What Students Say About the Gazette

©1997 Community Works Press