Covering disaster from the inside: Pali High journalists face their own story

During the year, the hometown team is the defending World Championshipits manager stopped one afternoon to visit with the high school baseball team.

National Media Notice. Neighborhood newspaper Record Activity. Photos spread quickly Social Media.

But on the day the Dodgers’ Dave Roberts gave his inspiring speech to the Palisades High Baseball team, the school newspaper wasn’t there.

Tideline staff (a student newspaper from Palisades Charter High School) have been living in their lives. Palisades wildfires destroyed their newsrooms, damaged schools and destroyed surrounding villages.

Dave Roberts’ story has to wait. There are more urgent stories to tell.

Two weeks after the fire roared for the first time, the school closed indefinitely and moved to Zoom, and Tideline staff met for the first planned meeting of the new semester. The editor of the joint movement said goodbye to his heartfelt farewell. He had enrolled in another school. The other three journalists also left.

A Tideline staff member temporarily moved in with Cloe Nourparvar, one of the three chairmen. Executive Editor Audrey Smith traveled from one hotel to another and then converted it with her family in a home in Coachella Valley for a week, and recently arrived at Airbnb’s real estate.

“We have a month and then we might move again,” Smith said in an interview.

As the course moves online, the classroom does not stop. For the Tideline staff, there is no report on so many important issues: the course will be resumed in person, if so, where? What happened to all the teachers who were displaced from the fire? Where does Paly’s sports team play home games?

In the coming weeks, Tides will post headlines in a reality that is far from Homecoming Games and Student Awards:

Wildfires damage Pali campus, surrounding communities

After the wildfire, the price of the rental market has risen to home in the rental market

Palikan: Student organizations support fire efforts

“We have too many stories and the writers don’t have too many stories, but that’s what’s happening now,” Nopalval said.

For young journalists at Pali High, the fire is more than just a challenge to report facts. Like professional newsrooms, issues of ethics and sensitivity arise.

During the first staff meeting, students faced this dilemma: Just before the winter holiday, Tideline published a satirical article about no one on campus really paying attention to fire alarms.

Here is the second paragraph: ‘Imagine if there is actually a fire, my table buddy giggles. transparent

A fire actually occurred 19 days after the article was published. Should student journalists change the story in any way, treat it as it is, or remove it from the website?

“I’m a little worried that the irony doesn’t taste good,” one co-author Cole Sugarman told his classmates on Zoom. “When I wrote it, I don’t think the whole town would burn.”

Pali’s news teacher endured it Her own hard times. In 2014, VICE Call her “Help women who change sports writing forever.”

In 1980, even before she graduated from Cal State Northridge, Los Angeles Daily News assigned Lisa Nehus Saxon to help with baseball coverage. From 1983 to 1987, the baseball jump was hers: first the Angels, then the Dodgers, then the Angels.

It’s not a cordial moment for Nehus Saxon or two other women covering the big league beats. Players were interviewed in the conference hall where women often don’t want it. Four teams banned her from leaving their club. Harassment was common when she was admitted. For every Tommy John who welcomed her, there was a Reggie Jackson Badge her.

“That’s probably why I handled the wildfire losses so well,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like the worst thing that happened to me.”

Nehus Saxon then covered the raiders of Long Beach News Social Attackers. In her last journalism job, for Riverside Press, she became friends with an administrator in the Los Angeles Unified School District, who spent the fall Saturday statistics at the USC football game.

“We are the only women in the news box that don’t provide food,” said Nehus Saxon.

The administrator called after Nehus Saxon lost his job in a layoff in 2001. The transition to a teaching profession has begun. In 2006, she landed in Pali.

On the day of the fire, she and her husband, retired Associated Press photographer Reed celebrated the winter break. The hotel TV station carries KTLA and Nehus Saxon watches her classroom burn from a distance.

Later, she saw a photo on the front page of The Times, where Principal Loss stood at the top of the stairs.

“The top of the stairs is U-102,” said Nehus Saxon. “Not my classroom anymore.”

Her home, within walking distance of Pali, was still standing. The damage assessment is in progress and she may not be able to return for a year or two. She taught from her sister’s spare room in her house in Granada Hills.

Her resilience is reflected in her students, and they are not shy about a difficult story.

“They are not interested in covering baking sales or blood drives,” she said.

Sports editor Sugarman highlighted the right thing because he was disappointed that major media coverage wasn’t always like this. No, there is no flame rising in the whole school. No, the day the fire broke out, the Barry students were not on campus.

“That kind bothers me,” he said.

As the Zoom staff meeting continued, students debated how to report ideas about the impact of the Palisade fires that did not require financial support. In fact, 47% of Pali students are people of color and 26% are financially disadvantaged. data From the U.S. News and World Report School Rankings.

“It’s ridiculous to lack empathy,” Nopalva said. “Everyone in Palisades is rich.”

Nehus Saxon shares information on how to find out what everyone wants to know: Are we back on campus this year?

Tip 1: Ask the teacher if he transfers his child from Pali. This may be a clear sign.

Tip 2: Review the agenda and attend the school council meeting to understand the options being considered.

Nourparvar enumerates a barrier that every student journalist must learn to overcome in a crisis or other time.

“It is known that the government is hard to obtain,” she said.

The story of Dave Roberts is finally finished. Executive editor Smith wrote it. Roberts met with the baseball team in a park about 10 miles from campus, which practiced in the shadow of Fox Studio Lot in Century City.

“It’s crazy,” Smith said. “That’s probably the biggest story I’ve ever written.”

Before, she meant. In these times, she wrote two fire stories before she could reach Roberts’ story, which is a fire story in itself. Roberts comforted a team that was unable to play at home due to natural disasters.

Fire stories keep coming. The staff created a feature, the Pali, where non-partners could write about their experiences in the fire. A write A poem.

Questions are constantly raised. Pali hopes to be next month Old Sears Building What happens to students who leave the West Side when they leave their homes in Santa Monica? What determines whether spring graduation can be held at the Barry Football Stadium? How to replace tides All books, cameras, tablets and microphones are lost when the news classroom burns?

The reporter was trained to become an observer. They reported the story. They are not part of the story. Tideline staff found it difficult and sometimes impossible to distance themselves from the story.

Smith Interview The person she knew was a student trapped in a house surrounded by flames for a moment.

“He thought he might die,” she said. “It’s very hard on it and trying to stay objective.”

With so many fundraisers sprouting, the tide staff researching the money in these efforts – school administration, certain courses, student groups, or people who may not be affiliated with the school at all?

this Raising Pali The fundraising event is run by the school. this Palikon Fundraising activities are run by students.

At other times, Tidelines may not have written about a fundraising event organized by a Tideline staff member, given the emergence of conflicts of interest. in this case, The Story of Pali’s Strong Appeared, but with a disclaimer: Staff involved in organizing the fundraising event “has not been interviewed for this article.”

Tideline staff edit each story as a course so that everyone can learn. The proposed title of Paly’s strong story begins with these two words: “Student pioneering.”

As Nehus Saxon gently told the class: “I don’t know if we want to ‘fire’ in the title.” Transparent

Essentially, this explains how tides decide to deal with ironic irony about fire alarms. There is no malice in it. Since fire alarms usually sound when someone is fueling in a school bathroom, who do you pay attention to when the alarm does fire?

“I’m not embarrassed by this story,” said co-author Sugarman. “I think that raises a good point.

“But, considering the people who read our website will be affected: Funny stories about fires on campus, especially after the school is burned down, that’s not what we are going to project.”

Times and other professional media rarely delete published stories. When a situation occurs, edited notes can be added to a story. Tideline staff thinks this. They decided that sometimes professionalism would be an absolute priority, but that was not that time. They fell the story.

“We will have some extra wit when it comes to things that we feel seriously affecting us or our friends,” Nopalwar said.