Toronto high school students launch their own newspaper

Kobe Tulloch · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 30, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Students astatine Toronto's Rosedale Heights School of the Arts person launched their ain paper to make abstraction for discussions astir the issues that substance astir to them. 

Led by editor-in-chief, Dylan Follett, The Spectacle is being enactment unneurotic by a squad of 17 editors with roles that scope from moving the sentiment conception to answering questions successful an proposal column.

The squad is hoping their 2nd measurement tin tackle much delicate issues.

Follett was inspired to recovered the insubstantial aft helium heard astir a memo Education Minister Jill Dunlop informing schoolhouse boards to support distant from governmental discussions successful mentation for the day of Hamas's Oct. 7th onslaught connected Israel. 

"I conscionable hated that. I deliberation schools request to beryllium a spot wherever we tin person conversations that matter, hard conversations," Follett said. 

"Because if not, we won't person them successful a civilian and informed way, oregon we won't person them astatine all."

A schoolhouse paper is his mode to commencement those conversations.

Follet pitched the task to Rosedale Heights teacher Todd Light past spring. At the time, Light had nary thought conscionable however superior the 17-year-old pupil was astir the project.  

"I thought helium would astir apt conscionable spell away," Light said.

But Follett followed up with emails astir the task implicit the summer. He adjacent planned the schedules for the nonexistent editorial committee and visited the New York Times bureau for inspiration. 

"The precise archetypal week of September, determination helium was to marque definite we were going to start," Light said.

Ink connected paper

At the paper's archetypal meeting, determination were much than 100 students successful the country for their archetypal meeting. 

Light recovered aged editions of Rosedale's erstwhile pupil paper, which ceased work successful 2017. He shared them with the would-be editor-in-chief arsenic imaginable inspiration, but Follett wasn't impressed. 

"They were called The Spectator. I was conscionable reasoning astir that sanction and it conscionable felt truthful passive. It didn't consciousness similar the benignant of paper I wanted to make," helium said. 

The rubric of the caller publication: The Spectacle.  

Follett said the caller sanction represents their editorial philosophy. He doesn't privation his reporters to beryllium passive, oregon debar arguable stories.

"Our quality isn't spectating what's happening. It's a spectacle," Follett said.

Follett ever intended The Spectacle to beryllium a printed product, counting The New York Times and The Globe and Mail arsenic some cardinal inspirations successful his determination to prosecute journalism. 

He likes that newspapers deficiency the instant gratification of a web search. Readers person to flip done the paper's pages to find the communicative they're looking for and person to glimpse astatine each communicative on the way, helium said. 

The schoolhouse helped find the students a spot to people the paper, but near them to fend for themselves successful getting it acceptable for production. 

"There was a immense learning curve for them, but I didn't cognize however to bash that either," Light said. 

"So present they cognize however to bash it and I don't. That organization cognition is with the kids, and they volition person to walk it connected erstwhile they graduate." 

Moving forward

The aboriginal of The Spectacle is uncertain. The schoolhouse has lone funded 2 issues of the paper, and it volition accidental goodbye to its laminitis erstwhile helium graduates this spring. 

Follett thinks the insubstantial volition outlive his tenure. 

"People person truly caught connected to the paper and it's go not conscionable my newspaper, but the full editorial's paper and the full unit paper and the full schools newspaper," helium said. "I judge successful their quality to support it going forward. I'm hopeful that it volition outlast me."

Bill Hutchinson, a journalism prof astatine Seneca Polytechnic, says this benignant of eagerness isn't thing helium sees from young students precise often. 

Hutchinson, a erstwhile quality anchor for CTV Toronto, says the enactment The Spectacle is producing is of astonishing breadth and quality. 

"Anybody tin archer you what happened. A bully writer volition archer you wherefore it happened and wherefore it's important to you, and that's what these students have," Hutchinson said. 

He hopes to spot immoderate of the young journalists from The Spectacle successful his classes someday.