Taft Newpaper Review

    Taft High Schools' issue 6 of the "Taft Today" was much better than the last issue we reviewed. This issue seemed far more organized and the layout was much more appealing to the reader. Although I still believe that things like bolding proper nouns in every article and rounding off the edges of photos are weird elements to include in a newspaper, it is a stylistic preference and their editors will probably continue to keep them. Still, I thought this issue of the "Taft Today" had better written and more interesting articles than the previous issue. I liked that their sports page included articles that weren't solely based on the outcome of different teams' games such as the profile on one of Taft's gym teachers Mr. Madden and the article on dance at Taft. I also think that Taft's masthead could be better. The white font in front of a picture of their school is a little basic, however, I do like that the masthead also includes previews of other pages in the paper with pictures. Overall, I still have mixed feelings about the "Taft Today" paper. This issue was definitely an improvement from the last paper we reviewed by them, however I think that there are still several things we do better in "The Beacon" than they do in the "Taft Today."

Bacon Review

I think the Bacon issue of our newspaper was the best paper that we have printed so far this year. Even though this was the satire issue, overall the layout, pictures, and stories were the better than any other paper we have produced so far. In the entire issue, there were only three pictures that weren't taken or created by one of our staff members which is a huge improvement from the last paper we put out. I have to give huge props to Claire for photoshopping pictures for four different articles because it really enhanced the overall quality of our Bacon issue. Another big improvement that I saw in this issue from our past papers was how clean and professional the Bacon looked. Now that all of the editors have experience using InDesign and creating the paper, I saw far fewer mistakes in the layout of our issue. There were no random boxes around parts of articles, inconsistent fonts on the same page, or other mistakes that we used to make.

Besides all of the technical improvements that we made in this issue, I also thought that we did a great job appealing to a wide range of students, faculty, and other readers of the Bacon. Our stories included quotes and pictures of people from different grades and departments which got even more people talking about the issue. The stories were also interesting, funny, and caught people's attention when they read the headlines. I especially think all of our headlines helped to "hook" our readers and make them actually read our articles. For example, Billy's article titled, "The war on jeans raises parental concerns," with Mr. Fanning in the picture, looks and sounds interesting/crazy so people stop to read the article. I was also very proud of my article which was called, "Get a leg up on your dance moves," because I think my pictures did a great job getting the attention of students and making them want to show the Bacon to their friends.

One thing that I would want to improve about this issue for next year would be to change the header of the Bacon. I think that the current header is ok, but just a little too dark and outdated. I think a more bright and "bacony" header would be more fun and still look good. I also think we should work harder fill the entire space that our articles are slotted for. For example, nine out of seventeen of the stories in the Bacon had at least one or two lines of white space leftover at the end of the article. We also had several spelling errors including misspelling the word "Check" as "Chcek" on the front page. Still, minor details like that don't take away from the paper at all and I think that as a whole this issue was extremely successful.

Stories

Student group suspected of committing arson from 'feeling the Bern'

• Picture- The picture was photoshopped well, I especially like the shadow of someone (the arsonist?) standing out of the frame.
• Headline- The headline is good, however there is a little bit of white space leftover and the word feeling in "Feeling the Bern could be capitalized"
• Overall quality- This article made great use of quotes that were realistic, but still funny and clearly satirical.

FOWY spends entire budget, installs bars on windows

• Picture- The picture is photoshopped as best as we could've made it, however the image is a little dark.
• Headline- There is some white space at the end of the headline; perhaps we could've written the headline as "FOWY spends entire budget to install bars on windows" to get rid of that space.
• Overall quality-

Hallway Patrol cast and crew apprehended for impersonating police officers; $50,000 bond set

• Picture- The photoshop job was excellent and faces/mugshots were very funny.
• Headline- The headline is a little long, but it takes up a lot of space. There is also a little white space in the upper right hand corner of the headline.
• Overall Quality- The article itself was pretty funny, but there were a couple mistakes in it. In the first paragraph the number "2" should be spelled out as two to fit AP style. Also in the line, "... which follows the jobs of two high school police officers, Officer Winkle and Officer Dinkle," the comma should be replaced with a colon.

Ted Cruz revealed as Kevin

• Picture- I thought this picture was very successful. I had never noticed how similar the actor who plays Kevin from the office and Ted Cruz looked. However, I didn't like that the caption under the picture says "Courtesy of Google Images." Google images is not the actual source of those photos!
• Headline- The headline was funny and quick to the point, which I liked, but there was some white space at the end of it.
• Overall Quality- The first sentence of this article is very jumbled and confusing. I don't think there should've been a comma after the word candidates, but it is also just a very awkward sentence.

AP fees stir violent reactions

• Picture- N/a
• Headline- The headline is kind of obscure. It doesn't really let the reader know what the article is about other than the fact that it mentions AP fees.
• Overall Quality- This article was very comical because it is extremely relatable to WY's student body. The name of the writer's

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

• Picture-N/a
• Headline- I thought the spacing for this headline was pretty good, but it could've been shifted down a little bit so that there was an even amount of white space on the top and bottom of the headline instead of it all being on the bottom.
• Overall Quality- Both the "Chicken" and "Egg" sides to this article were funny however both had white space at the bottom of the articles. The "Egg" article particularly had a lot of leftover white space. In the "Chicken" article, however, the last sentence in the fourth paragraph accidentally has two commas next to each other instead of just one being there.

Five by Five

• Picture- I thought that the five by five pictures were funny. Most people had funny expressions or the camera took the picture from an angle that made it funny.
• Headline- N/a
• Overall Quality- I thought that this five by five could've been a little better. I think the two questions "Who is your celebrity crush?" and "Who you gonna call?" weren't funny because we decided to make everyone give the same answers. There could've been funnier responses to those questions.

Who wore it better?

• Picture- The pictures themselves were pretty good, but I wish that they were the same size and that they were spaced better, There is a lot of white space around the pictures and the article itself and the captions of the photos don't line up with each other.
• Headline- I like that the headline of this article was a different font because it was a fun break from the standard newspaper look.
• Overall Quality- This article was okay, however, I thought that the sassy tone/voice in the article was overplayed a little bit. In the article the author wrote, "Pictured (from left to right) is Jacob Kayser 17', Jacob Shariq 17' and Kayla Wade 16'." In this quote, the apostrophes should be placed in front of the year (ex. '17) instead of behind it and there is also a missing comma after listing "Jacob Shariq 17'" in the sentence.

Summer Vacay Cancelled?!?! CPS Budget cuts to thank

• Picture- I did not like the pictures for this article because they were taken from google images, credited that way, (instead of citing the actual source), and the picture of the man is left un-captioned. I don't know who the person is in the picture so it should be captioned and using a clip art image just  looks unprofessional in my opinion.
• Headline- This headline was okay, but there is white space left at the end of it. The words "Vacay," "Cancelled," and "Budget" shouldn't be capitalized.
• Overall Quality- This article was very confusing to me because I can't tell what the "VE program" really is and I didn't find it very funny.

Hot Spot

• Picture- This picture was good
• Headline- N/a because it was the usual hot spot headline. I like the use of a different font on this page again.
• Overall Quality- I liked this article because it was short and sweet. From the very beginning of this article, readers can tell what this article is going to be about because of the headline and picture alone so keeping this article short with a few extra jokes thrown into it made it successful in my mind.

Fashion Icon

• Picture- I was not that big of a fan of the pictures used in the fashion icon. I thought that it was kind of weird to have Mr. Rehak be the fashion icon, but I thought that we should've at least planned ahead enough to have three different outfits/looks for him to wear. I don't like that Mr. Rehak is wearing the same sweater in each photo with the same accessories just rearranged differently because it looks like we didn't put any effort into the article. Even though we may not want to put a student in as the fashion icon so that nobody's feelings are hurt, I think maybe we should find a student willing to participate or include a different story to put in the paper.
• Headline- N/a
• Overall Quality- This article was okay, however several paragraphs mention Mr. Rehak's infamous red scarf as his favorite accessory, his go-to outfit, etc., however, he doesn't wear the red scarf in any of the pictures. There is also a typo in the question, "Do you own anything by then?" The word "then" should be replaced with "them."

Teachers: They're Just Like Us!

• Picture- The pictures for this article are great. I like that they each have their own joke to them. The only picture I didn't really understand was the one of Mr. Katz saying, "They fight for justice!" but it didn't really take away from the article.
• Headline- This headline was pretty funny, but should've been slightly bigger to take up more space.
• Overall Quality- N/a

Classifieds

• Pictures- N/a
• Headline- I liked the use of a different font. It distinguishes the classifieds as different and separate from the other articles.
• Overall Quality- I thought all of the classifieds were really funny. My favorite one was the ad for a fake school I.D. However, the phrase "NEED FAKE PARENT TO SIGN ME OUT OF CLASS" should've been in bold to fit the layout of the other two ads.

Athlete Spotlight

• Picture- The picture for this article was hilarious. This was another great photoshop job by Claire.
• Headline- There was too much white space leftover after this headline.
• Overall Quality- This article was pretty funny because most people know Claire and know that she is not the athletic type. However, if you didn't know Claire this article was probably a lot less funny to read.

Acadec team develops training routine

• Picture- I thought that this photo was pretty funny and I like that it included an Acadec team member, but it is very dark which makes it hard to see the pens in the team members hands.
• Headline- This headline was alright, but there was a decent amount of white space left beside it.
• Overall Quality- I liked this article a lot because it was very detailed. It included a lot of Acadec team members in it and played on the joke that they train like a sports team well.

Kash cashes in with Nike sponsorship

• Picture-N/a
• Headline- I think this headline is great because it has a play on words, but also fills up the space it needs to fill.
• Overall Quality-This article was funny and did a good job including real people from Nike and our school. I liked the joke about King James and Queen Kash because it is a joke about the sponsorship, but also uses chess piece names.

Get a leg up on your dance moves

• Picture- I was really proud of the way my pictures turned out. I thought they were all very funny and a lot of WY students came up to me after seeing the article either telling me to hit the leg dab or saying that my article was funny.
• Headline- I think the headline is great and I'm thankful to Tatiana (or whoever came up with it) because it is much better than my original headline. If it could be a little longer to get rid of the white space at the end that'd be great, but overall it's pretty good.
• Overall Quality- The only mistake I found in my article was that a hyphen made up of two dashes ("--") should've been replaced with the actual longer single dash hyphen ("―"). Also some of my paragraphs look like they were indented twice on accident so the formatting on those could've been fixed.

The war on jeans raises parental concerns

• Picture- The picture is very funny because Mr. Fanning is wearing the exact type of jeans Billy is describing. It is a little dark, but you are still able to make out the look of the jeans so it works.
• Headline- The headline for this article is a little confusing, but I have no idea what I would've headlined this article so it is probably as good as we could get it. There is, however, a lot of white space remaining beside the headline.
• Overall Quality- I thought that this article was actually hilarious, however I thought it was a little weird that Billy referred to moms and dads together as "the elderly" several times. Still, it kind of added to the humor of the article and I thought it was a success overall.

Installation statue is actual student

• Picture- N/a
• Headline- The headline for this article was okay. I didn't feel hooked by it, but it wasn't bad and the spacing for it worked out so that there was little white space left over.
• Overall Quality- This article was very funny and successful in my opinion because of its use of quotes. The progression throughout the article of quotes from Jerry Hack's friends to the school nurses to Dr. Kenner all work together to string together one joke which I thought was clever.

Random Mistakes

Page 1

• In the previews of the rest of the paper at the bottom of the page "Check" is misspelled "Chcek."

Hancock High School Newspaper Review

Hancock High School's "The Signature" was a very odd newspaper compared to the other papers that I have seen so far. Although their paper was eight pages in total, the content of "The Signature" seemed much more shallow and less varied than our paper typically is. There were no official sections that separated their articles ion each page, but rather articles seemed to be simply placed one after another in a row of pages. There was very little organization and that, combined with the layout the editors came up with, made for a very confusing paper. The one part of the paper that was "organized," was the section titled "Whatchoo got to day?" However, even where there was supposed to be some sort of organization and order, the Hancock editors made their layout extremely confusing. This section stretched out onto four out of eight pages of "The Signature" and changed titles twice from "Whatchoo Got to Say?" to "More of Whatchoo Got to Say" to "Whatchoo Said." The lack of consistency, in addition to placing this section onto four pages, was very weird and didn't really make sense to me. In fact, three out of the four other articles not in the "Whatchoo Got to Say" category ran onto multiple pages. The article titled, "Can Anyone Be a Leader?," which ran onto three pages, also changed its title on a different page to just "Leaders" and even switched which side of the paper it was on. Overall I thought that the layout really took away from this paper and made it less interesting and more confusing.

Although the format of "The Signature" was bad, the thought behind the articles was a little better. I thought the "Humans of Hancock" piece and the "College Is Not for Everyone" article were both interesting and relevant to their audience. However, a lot of the journalistic fundamentals that Mr. Rehak has been teaching us all year were still missing in those pieces. Simple things such as forgetting to end a quote with a second quotation mark, missing the year or position of a staff member, and other grammar mistakes were prevalent in these articles. The best feature of "The Signature" was its use of pictures and specifically the fact that it had only original pictures taken by the paper's staff members. Although I think "The Beacon" is probably a better paper overall than "The Signature," I don't know if we've ever put out a paper that has done that in the last two years.

Taft Newspaper Review

Taft High School's newspaper, "Taft Today," was my least favorite newspaper that we have reviewed so far. I thought that the issue Taft sent to us was a very average paper compared to other school's papers we have seen and far below the standards of "The Beacon." While flipping through the pages of "Taft Today," I was most bothered by the layout and design of each page. Although Taft didn't use any online pictures or pictures taken by people outside of their newspaper staff, they overused graphics and drawings in their paper that made their paper look less polished and professional. Additionally, I thought the font choices, picture placement, and color scheme were poorly chosen and lowered the quality of the paper. I especially disliked the fact that in every article, any and every pronoun was bolded so that it stood out darker than the rest of the text around it. That decision doesn't really make sense to me and, again, reduces the quality of the paper as a whole. My least favorite part of the "Taft Today," however, was the comic on page eight. I thought that the comic used a very basic and unoriginal form of humor. Although some people might criticize Billy's "Casheu Jones" for using the same silly or "stupid" joke in each new comic, every time the joke is reused it becomes funnier and funnier. I didn't see any kind of originality that made the comic in Taft's paper funny or interesting and so I didn't enjoy reading it. Overall, I did not enjoy the "Taft Today" newspaper and I think that as a staff we are thoughtful enough not to make the decisions (mistakes) that Taft's newspaper staff made.

Jones Newspaper Review

Overall, I think that Jones' "Blueprint" was a strong newspaper in terms quality of writing, however, I thought this one of the weaker newspapers we have reviewed so far with regards to layout, organization, and presentation. Although I can see how others might enjoy the overall presentation of the "Blueprint," I did not like many of the choices that the editors made about the "look" of the paper. One of the things I didn't like about the "Blueprint" was that all of the stories were organized into only four sections: opinions, sports, school, and lifestyle. I feel as though these categories are too general for the range of articles newspapers usually publish and that our selection of news, sports, arts and trends, student life, features, and opinions does a much better job organizing our newspaper. Another issue that I had with the "Blueprint" was that many of their articles were too long for a high school audience, or at least the students at WY. Although the "Blueprint" included several well-written and thorough articles, some of those pieces took up an entire page or the majority of a page on their own. For example, the article on page 4 titled, "Cultural Clash: Explaining Cultural Appropriation," literally took up the entirety of that page. As a high school student, when I see a wall of text that big in a school newspaper, I usually won't even bother to try and read that article because I know I won't finish it. Similarly, I thought the other two "Lifestyles" articles on page 5 and the  front page article were also too long for the intended audience. Lastly, I did not enjoy the header of the "Blueprint." I think that the header design looks as though someone simply drew the word "Blueprint" in pen using bubble letters and then sloppily colored it in. I think that the designs people can make using an actual design software like Photoshop look much more polished and professional than the header Jones' newspaper staff created.

February Issue Beacon Review

The February issue of the Beacon was the best newspaper that we have put together all year. I'm glad that as the year has progressed, our issues have seemed to steadily increase in quality, however, with each issue it seems a new problem presents itself. For this issue, that problem was our overuse of graphics and pictures from the Internet and our lack in consistency in sourcing those graphics and pictures. Our different forms of sourcing these photos both from the Internet as well as our own staff members was my least favorite part of this issue by far because it was extremely obvious and inconsistent. Different forms of sourcing photos from outside sources ranged from sentences such as "All picture courtesy of pitchfork.com" to simply "Google Images." I think simply saying "Google Images" is an extremely unprofessional way to give credit for a photo because it really isn't giving credit to anybody. We should at least be able find the website that the photo came from and give credit to that site. Additionally, we were inconsistent in crediting our own staff members for taking photos. On the front page under the picture for the first article we have, "Claire Bentley/ Staff Photographer" and on the last page for the hotspot article picture we wrote, "Photo courtesy of Billy Roche '16." Small inconsistencies like this are the things that keep our paper from moving from good to great.  Granted, we've never been told exactly how we should source a photo or graphic in the Beacon, and I myself didn't think twice about it when I wrote, "Photo courtesy of www.allys-allies.com," the editors should communicate more with each other to avoid problems like these. The good news is that this issue is extremely easily fixable. Moving forward we should simply establish a clear, definite way to give credit for our photos. 

Besides the inconsistent sourcing of our photos, however, I really enjoyed this issue of the Beacon. All of the editors deserve props for their pages in this issue because each one was extremely thought out and it showed. I was personally extremely proud of the way the Sports page ended up coming together, but my next second most favorite pages were the Opinions page and the Features page. I thought that the Teacher's Matchmaking Guide was a clever and fun theme for this issue's Features page and was definitely one of the most interesting pages in the paper. The match-ups and answers were funny and unexpected and I think everyone reading this issue enjoyed seeing which teachers got paired with each other. I also thought that the Opinions page was successful because it had a wide range of different and interesting topics. Phoebe's Heard in the Halls article was funny and entertaining, Maia and Tatiana's articles were political and interesting, and the versus articles by Katherine and Luke were relevant to WY students. The mixture of different types of articles all came together in an aesthetically pleasing page and simply worked together. Finally, I loved the new Beacon header that Peter created for this issue. I think that it's really cool to create a header that is unique to our specific Beacon class. Although it was a little stretched out and pixelated, the header still looked nice and I don't think that touching it up or resizing it for our next issue will be too hard. 

Boys Bowling Article Draft

The WY boys bowling team’s season ended on January 23, 2016, after participating in the sectionals state-qualifier tournament. Although they didn’t place high enough in the sectional competition to advance to the final state series, the Dolphins had a good season, and finished in 13th place at sectionals.

Although the WY Boys Bowling team season was over, one dolphin, Jace Miyagi ‘16, competed as an individual at the sectionals state-qualifier competition and finished in 17th place out of 168 competitors in the individuals tournament. Although Miyagi competes as a part of the team during the regular season, he competes individually outside of high school bowling and decided to compete that way for the sectional and state tournament. In the end, Miyagi knocked down a total of 1,272 pins over six games at the sectionals tournament and advanced to compete in the state finals competition.The finals took place on Friday, January 29 and Saturday, January 30, 2016. 

After the state finals, Miyagi commented, “I was somewhat nervous going into the tournament, since it was my first year qualifying for state, but I’ve come to know other bowlers who do not attend WY that were also participating in the tournament, so their presence eased the tension.” Over the course of the two days, Miyagi bowled four rounds, each round with three games in it. At the end of the tournament, Miyagi knocked down a total of 2,611 pins in the 12 games and finished in 44th place at the state tournament. Miyagi said, “I am very pleased with my performance. I bowled around average which is respectable due to the hectic, high pressure environment and long tournament format.” Miyagi will continue his bowling career as a part of Purdue University’s collegiate program.

A first person narrative of the WY power outage

On Wednesday, January 13, as I walked into the Arts Building on my way back from Mariano's, the school was covered in eerie darkness. Suddenly, my friend Sophie Leib-Neri '16 burst out of the orchestra classroom, "Dillon! The power’s been out since 12:30!" Confused, I didn't immediately process what she had just said. Then, behind her, where I would normally see Mr. Mascari's desk and rows of chairs arcing in a semicircle towards the door, I saw only darkness. Finally it clicked, and the questions started running through my head, why is the power out, are the rest of our classes canceled, is everything ok?  Naturally, as a senior, I was more worried about whether class would resume rather than my own safety. As I continued to walk through the 2nd floor of the Arts Building towards the Arts Bridge I saw that the hallway doors were closed. Ok, now this is freaky, I thought to myself. I was concerned that WY was in some sort of lockdown mode. However, as I walked up to the doors and pushed them, they swung right open.

From the Arts Bridge I could see the Blue House lunchroom, hallways, and classrooms, all dark except for one sole light that somehow was still on. Once I was back in Blue House, everything seemed calm. The students were eating their lunches in the dark, like any other day, and I felt at ease as I walked to a table to sit down. I saw Mr. Locks bring his class outside to sit under the one light still on next to Mr. Fanning's office. Eventually Dr. Kenner's voice came on the P.A. She reassured us that everything was fine and that the power had gone out while one of WY's engineers was on the roof working with our electrical systems. Then, she announced that everybody should remain in their current classroom through the end of the period until further notice. At that moment, Blue House erupted with cheers and clapping; Dr. Kenner was still speaking on the P.A., but it was impossible to hear her over the students who were celebrating their good fortune at being able to stay out of class until the power returned. People were taking snapchats, playing music, even a "one six" chant was started as if somehow the power outage was part of a senior blackout. The minor reprieve was short-lived, however, because at 12:55pm students were told to go to their next period. My 6th period class, being a classroom with lots of natural light, continued as per usual and at 1:30pm the lights came back on.

Review of Glenbrook North High School's Torch

The Glenbrook North (GBN) newspaper, the Torch, has been the best newspaper sent to us yet by far. The paper has the strongest articles, creative and (mostly) original pictures, as well as the best layout of any paper we've seen. One of the best things about the GBN newspaper is that its articles are not only full and lengthy, but also that they are relevant to the student body and are written in various styles. For example, on the front page of the GBN paper is an article about how Illinois law has changed so that drinking tickets do not have to be reported to high schools anymore. At first, it may seem that the only link to GBN is that some high schoolers there have probably engaged in underage drinking; however, the author of the article starts the article off by including an example of how the old law prevented a starting player on GBN's varsity football team from competing during the season. Immediately, the author's audience is intrigued by how the change in the law may affect themselves, their peers, or other football stars in the future. After the initial hook, complete with a short summary and quote, the article goes into detail about the difference between the old law and the new law, as well as the reason for the change in the law. Again, the author uses quotes from credible sources on the topic. Additionally, the author interviewed other members of GBN's community and their thoughts on how the new law will affect student behavior. The article provides a complete overview of the "news" being shared with the audience, relates how that information can or will affect GBN students, and includes responses/reactions of people from the GBN community to that information. I think that this article is complete, finished and polished and is a perfect model of how we should think about writing articles in the Beacon. besides providing finished and professional articles, the GBN paper included a variety of writing styles. For example, the article "High school trends: stress and sleep deprivation" on page 5 was written as a narrative from the viewpoint of the author during a typical day at school. Compared with Luke Zarzecki's recent article about sleep deprivation in students, I wouldn't say one is better than the other simply because Luke's article was more informative and the GBN article was more creative, however, I did find the GBN article more interesting. Although some people may want to read and informational piece about the statistics of high schoolers' sleeping habits, I thought the GBN sleep deprivation piece added more to their newspaper than Luke's would because it provided a change in pace from the normal newspaper article structure. Thus, the input of a creative article conveying the same overall idea is more pleasant to read and adds more value to GBN's newspaper. Finally, I really enjoyed the Torch's use of graphics, pictures and drawings in their paper. The only pictures/drawings/graphics not taken or created by students that I could find were the picture on the front page of the paper and the pictures from the "Holiday Gift Guide" article. Other than that, every picture was student created, and yet the pictures were still professional and well executed. My favorite picture was the graphic on page 8 for the "Excessive sitting poses health risks" article, but I also really enjoyed how the Boys Swimming article on page 12 was made to look like a pool itself. Overall this paper was really successful and I think aiming to produce a paper of this quality is a good goal for our Beacon class.

January Burning Up/Burning Out

Burning Up

• Relationships- It’s cuffing season
• Kevin Gates – Watch out for some bangers dropping soon
• Netflix Originals – You watched a tv show live?!? With commercials?!?
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens – It’s not too late to pretend like you saw it when it first came out
• Yeezys- “You ain’t got no yeezys hitta?”
• Frank Ocean- Did you see the tweets?

Burning Out

• Hotline Bling – Stop pla-aying this song, bum bum, bum bum…
• Holiday music – It’s beginning to look a lot like the worst time of the year where it’s still cold and crappy out but there’s nothing to look forward to.
• College applications – If you haven’t finished by now, what are you doing?
• DJ Khaled’s snapchat story – we don’t want… another one
• Finstagrams – They aren’t a secret anymore
• Winter break- Time to get back to reality

New Years Resolutions

1. Learn to shred on the guitar or at least be able to play the songs for the concert.
2. Finish 1st semester with all As and one B in AP Calculus.
3. Eat less junk food.
4. Go on a camping trip with the boys this summer.
5. Beat Grayslake Central High School in lacrosse this season.

People React To Being Called Beautiful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW8BDgLpZkI

     An integrated arts project created by former ChiArts student Shea Glover ‘15, has recently become something of an internet sensation six months after initially being uploaded to Youtube. Her viral video captured the reactions people had after being told they’re beautiful. The mixed reactions, ranging from being flattered to not knowing what to say to threatening to cut Glover if she repeated what she said, produced a truly unique and moving video that now has nearly 8.2 million views on Youtube. In addition to this, the video has been featured in dozens of online publications including People.com, Attn.com, Mashable.com, Cosmopolitan.com, and Seventeen.com.

     In the description Glover writes, “I conducted an independent project, which evidently turned into a social experiment halfway through, regarding beauty at my performing arts high school in Chicago. I want to clarify that my intentions were not to get a reaction out of people. I was simply filming beauty and this is the result. Here it is.” Though the initial goal of the project may not have been to get a reaction out of the people Glover found beautiful, the resulting reactions created a powerful social experiment worth watching.

     Shea has capitalized on her new-found “internet fame” by starting her own movement called #breathebeauty in an attempt to change the way people, particularly young people like herself, perceive and express beauty. Most recently, Shea has created a video called “You Are Not Your Likes” featured on the Huffington Post’s website. In this video Shea encourages millennials and really all people to not let social media determine your self worth. Check the video out below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B9T00P2wsI

"Girls Tennis duo wins State" Correction

The WY girls tennis team placed 6th in the State championship bracket. Oni Jones ‘16 and Camryn Salter ‘18 scored 7 points, the most points for WY’s team, but finished with a record of 4-2. Although Oni Jones and Camryn Salter won games downstate in the IHSA girls tennis double state championship bracket, they did not win the 1st place championship as the title of the article implies. We regret and apologize for any confusion created by this error.

December Issue Beacon Review

     Once again, I believe the quality of The Beacon as a whole went up, although we still had some major problems with this issue. The biggest problems with this issue were in the formatting of the News and Features pages and, or course, the "Girl Tennis duo wins State" article on the sports page. As we now all know, the WY girls tennis team did not win state, however this title was still published in The Beacon. Although mistakes like these should never happen, we can only move forward from this by fact-checking and verifying everything we publish rather than simply asking one person about a story. On the News and Features pages, both the "Interest in Ethnic Studies class grows at WY' article and the "Staff Picks Holiday Playlist" article chose really horrible backgrounds that washed out the text on top of them and made the articles hard to read. In order to fix this, we are going to have to print our test pages in full color as well as be mindful of our color choices when creating the paper in InDesign. Besides these errors, however, I was only able to find one grammar mistake in this issue (a missed comma in Claire's article), and I found no spelling errors in the rest of the issue. My two favorite stories were Claire's "CPS students take action in wake of budget crisis" article and Lydia's "An interview with a college admissions officer" article. Despite Claire's small typo, her article was really well written and interesting. I think it showcased WY's students in a very positive light and was well supported with facts and quotes. Lydia's article was also very interesting to me and I think it probably caught the eye of many seniors going through the college admissions process. Although there is still some things we need to work on as a staff, I think this was our best Beacon issue yet and that the quality of our paper will only increase from here.

Who would you choose to be president in 2016?

What are you going to do this winter break?

What is your favorite thing to do in the snow?

What is your favorite season?

What’s your favorite book to cuddle in the cold weather with?

Cole Rodby ‘16

• Bill Clinton
• Work on my mixtape
• Count the snowflakes
• Paprika
• “Captain Underpants” by Dav Pilkey

Mahalia Dalmage ‘17

• Mariko Dennis
• Listen to some bangers via B96
• Change its color
• Winter
• “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance” by Atul Gwande

Justin Chen ‘19

• Kanye West
• Hibernate
• Be buried in it
• Summer
• “50 Shades of Grey” by E.L. James

Millie Klamen ’16

• Aunt Jemima
• Hang out with with Bonnie Klamen
• Eat it…?
• WNBA post-season
• “Ferdinand Uses the Potty: Overcoming Bed-Wetting Fears (Growing with Love)” by Jason Tucker

Abhinav Goel

• Not Donald Trump
• TBD
• I prefer to be indoors
• Autumn
• “And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie

Mother McAuley Review

Overall I would consider the Mother McAuley newspaper as a very well made and successful student publication. The paper was rather long, but throughout the entire thing I thought the McAuley staff did a good jobs of writing interesting articles that their students would want to read. One of my favorite pages in the paper was page 8 with the articles that debated whether or not the U.S. should accept Syrian refugees. This article was similar to the "vs." articles that we publish in the Beacon, however, I really loved the fact that at the end of each article the authors got two members of the McAuley community to give a statement about what they believe the U.S. should do. I think any opportunity to include more people from WY's community in our articles is an opportunity that we should take and this could be a fun way to do that. One thing that I didn't like about Mother McAuley's paper was that it didn't really cover sports very well. Their paper had two sports articles, however, both articles were the equivalent of our athlete spotlights. There were no articles that actually covered a sport's progress in their season or how they were doing this year. Although athlete spotlights can be interesting, I don't think a sports page in a newspaper can go without actually covering the sports that are in season and updating the the school community on how they are doing.

The Pritzker Press Review

     The Pritzker Press was my least favorite newspapers of the newspapers we received so far. However I think that The Beacon is still weaker than The Pritzker Press in a couple ways. Reading through the articles in this paper I didn't find any spelling mistakes which I thought was very impressive. However, I did happen to notice the article "Letter from the Editors" which stated that The Pritzker Press had over 130 journalism students in it with two levels of editing. After reading that line I actually expected a lot more out of The Pritzker Press since they are only producing an eight page paper. Still, I think that as a group we need to refine our editing process to be more efficient and successful in producing well-written essays. One thing I didn't like about The Pritzker Press was the police brutality article on page six. Although the article was a fairly interesting and well-written piece, I thought it was much too long. The majority of our audience wouldn't be focused or interested enough in the story to keep with an article that long. I though that to take up half of a page for that story with no picture was a waste of space. One article I did like was the article, "What is the IB Program?," because the article surveyed over 166 students at Pritzker about whether or not they would take IB classes. The article drew a lot of responses from Pritzker's student body and produced interesting results that people would actually want to read.

The Warrior Review

     I was less impressed by The Warrior than I was by The Saint Ignatius Spirit, however, I think that overall the paper was still very interesting and had several good elements in it. One small thing that I noticed right away was the cartoon. After first reading the cartoon I was extremely disappointed because the cartoon simply wasn't very funny. However, I noticed underneath the cartoon there was a small box underneath the cartoon saying "Cartoonist Wanted" and right next to that was another box saying "Advertise in the Warrior." I think that a cool addition to The Beacon could be to have a small section of ads from different organizations withing WY. For example, student council could advertise the next dance or NHS could advertise tutoring in the writing center. We could even put announcements from the administration in this section as another way of communicating upcoming school functions. Another interesting part of The Warrior was the fact that they had a section that included an advice column. I remember back when I was a freshmen The Beacon had an advice column and if there was someone in our class that would want to do it I think we could bring back an advice column to our paper. Hopefully in future years we could establish a large enough social media presence to receive questions through twitter, facebook, or even snapchat that our advice columnist could answer. The rest of The Warrior was pretty standard and nothing else really stood out to me. The kind of articles they wrote about were pretty similar to the ones we write in The Beacon. I will say, however, that the front page of The Warrior and even The Saint Ignatius Spirit were much better than our front pages usually are. I like that the front page of both of those papers were covered in pictures so that the majority of the front page was pictures and not words. I think their style of using more pictures just grabs the attention of students right away in a much more effective way than long articles.

The Saint Ignatius Spirit Review

     Overall, The Saint Ignatius Spirit was my favorite newspaper that we've received so far. This newspaper had the best layout, color scheme, font, and pictures of all three newspapers and the finished product looks extremely professional. The front and back pages were the best two pages of this newspaper in my opinion because they both looked extremely thought out. Using Saint Ignatius' school colors as the color scheme for their newspaper was a smart move and the layout of both pages is very creative. I love the back page with the flow chart stemming from the Saint Ignatius Wolfpack logo because it includes a ton of creative, funny, and most importantly interactive "bubbles." For example, one bubble asked a funny, open-ended question about Harry Potter and told students to tweet their answer using hashtags we made up. I think emulating something like this where we ask students to tweet their answer either "at" us or using our hashtag could be really successful and we could also offer our gift cards as rewards to them. Another part of the back page that I really like is the part where they highlighted three different students' tweets about Saint Ignatius. The reason I like this idea so much is because it is really fun for students to see their friends and themselves in the paper as well as get excited to try to be highlighted in this section for the next issue. The rest of The Saint Ignatius Spirit is professionally written and produced (they don't have random boxes around random parts of articles) and I think all of their pictures where very well taken. The pictures in the paper are especially worth noting because they were all taken by students and they all still look interesting and well produced. I hope that throughout the year The Beacon can evolve into a paper that looks as well made as this one.

October Open House Issue Review

     I think the open house issue of the beacon was less successful than our first September issue because it wasn't as interesting as our first issue and it seems like there were more grammatical errors in this issue than in the September issue. My favorite page was page 2 with all of the teacher interviews and the 5x5. I liked the range of teachers that we had because we included teachers from almost every main department in Whitney Young while also showing the diversity of the Whitney Young staff. My two favorite interviews were the interview with Ms. Pasulka and the interview with Ms. Au. I liked Ms. Pasulka's interview because I thought that it would really appeal to parents who read her interview that Whitney Young has a staff member whose only role is to help improve the writing of Whitney Young students and teachers. I also liked Ms. Au's interview because it seemed a little more natural than some of the other interviews. What I mean by that is that she told a short story in her interview that didn't seem like a plug for why Whitney Young is perfect in every way, but instead was just a nice story related to how she got to Whitney Young. That being said Ms. Au was still able to say something nice about our school and our math team which works for being in the open house issue. I also thought the 5x5 was good for the Open House edition because even though the answers were a little short they did make Whitney Young sound good to our prospective students.
     My least favorite page was page 3 because once again we were unable to sort out our formatting issue with the box outlines around some of our text boxes. I also disliked page 3 because there were a lot of grammatical errors in Phoebe's article that I wish we would've caught and edited. I noticed her story had a lot of misuse with commas as well as a lot of other minor grammatical errors. For example after naming Luna Mac-Williams in the article she put "18'" with the apostrophe after the 18 instead of before. Small details like this could've been easily avoided and would've added to the quality of the issue. I also thought Claire's article on page 1 about the open house was a kind of weird story to put in the open house edition. Although I understand that the article was supposed to serve as a kind of message to prospective students that Whitney Young is excited to have them at our school it still seemed a little strange to include. Overall I think that the issue was pretty good and served its purpose well, but that it could've been improved just a bit to be a little more successful.