An “Extra! Extra!” Elective

The Governor is back to life thanks to a new English elective.

For decades, a group of passionate The Governor’s Academy students published a campus newspaper, dubbed The Governor, as their chosen Afternoon Program activity. But with hundreds of Afternoon Program options to explore across athletics, the arts, and community service, the student staff dwindled to the point where the newspaper was no longer sustainable. English teacher Tom Robertson P’16,’20,’24 was one of many Govs faculty members who mourned the loss and wondered if The Governor could be revived.

Robertson is now in his twenty-fifth year at Govs and serves as the faculty advisor to The Spire literary magazine, a collection of creative writing and artwork published each spring. He wanted to take on advising the newspaper, but scheduling posed a problem. “I coach two sports, so it wasn’t possible for me to bring it back as a part of the Afternoon Program,” Robertson says. “I asked if I could do it as a class, and the Academic Dean was supportive.”

The inaugural semester-long Journalism elective was offered for the first semester of the 2024-2025 school year, and this year it will be offered in both semesters. The current class has 16. “Next semester, I will have a whole new crop of 16 students,” Robertson says. By moving the newspaper from an Afternoon Program activity to an English elective in which students earn a grade, The Governor can maintain a full and engaged staff. “Most of my students have not self-identified as journalists,” Robertson says. “There are a few that know it is their real interest, but a number of them either know who I am as a teacher or it is the class that best fits in their schedule.”

Elliot Evans ’26 is hoping to study sports broadcasting in college, and signed up for the Journalism elective because she is interested in the communications field. “Reading The Governor last year really inspired me,” she says. “I also thought it would be an interesting class because we get to interact with the community.” Evans has the New York Times app on her phone and reads its headlines daily. She also follows sports-related social media accounts, including ESPN and the NFL, as well as content creators who explore fashion trends, but admits that The Governor is her first experience with a more analog style of reporting.

Cole Riehl ’26 previously took two of Robertson’s other classes and enjoyed his teaching style. “This class is something outside of the ordinary high school English class,” he says. “I wanted to do something different in my senior year.” Riehl plans to play lacrosse at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania after graduating, and follows sports-related news sites in addition to enjoying business news and keeping up with current events. Like Evans, he reads the majority of his news online, but sourced information from several newspaper articles for his junior year thesis on Muhammad Ali’s work for social change.

The Journalism semester starts with a week of talking about what makes journalism good or bad, reviewing different journalistic styles demonstrated in previous issues of The Governor, and looking at newspapers published by other area residential high schools. Then, it’s time to work on the group’s first issue. “I don’t have a long curriculum for journalism as a practice,” Robertson says. “We discuss the different stages of putting an article together, and then we go right into production mode.”

Each issue of The Governor comes together over the course of three weeks, with a different team of student editors at the helm. Evans and Riehl both served as editors for the first issue of the year, along with Angelina Moroz ’26, and were responsible for approving article ideas, reviewing drafts, designing the layout, and writing an editorial. The eight-page newspaper also includes news stories, opinion pieces, sports and arts coverage, and human interest articles. The back page has a Govs-themed word search and photos captured around campus, allowing more of the student body the chance to appear in print.

Numerous teaching opportunities arise with each production cycle as students have questions about their articles. “There are times that I will address questions to the whole class, but more often it ends up being a one-on-one or small group conversation, because different students are writing different types of articles,” Robertson says. “The class is not just about training future journalists. It’s about doing good writing practice with the idea that journalism is one way to achieve that.”

The students are learning the importance of meeting deadlines, and how to manage getting the source information they need to write their articles when many of their interview subjects are busy faculty with difficult schedules. Robertson also helps them eliminate extraneous information, trimming their articles to the appropriate length —generally 500 words or less. “I do more of that work with the journalism class than I do with my other English classes in terms of being concise,” Robertson says. “We try to be as economical with the word count as we can be.”

Looking forward, Evans hopes to see The Governor expand even further, and is considering polling the student population to hear what they might like to read, and how more people could be motivated to get involved. For Riehl, staying on top of current events is the priority. He wants to make sure that the newspaper is not just writing the same usual stories about The Governor’s Academy, but is instead giving the students and faculty something new to read about.

Robertson’s goals are more overarching. “I want my students to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment in having put out The Governor,” he says. “Their names are on the articles and the newspaper is seen by a wide audience. I want them to feel proud to be a member of the staff responsible for putting out a widely read public document.”