Upon the arrival of the Journalism Education Association (JEA) Scholastic Journalism Week, which began on Feb. 16 and lasts through Feb. 22, many students involved in the creation of a publication, such as a literary magazine, newspaper or yearbook, have been asking themselves the same question: “What does scholastic journalism mean to me?”

Of course, these answers vary greatly from students who work on different publications at the school. However, because the common purpose of each of the publications at Jefferson is of the common function of each publication, to distribute information to the student body at Jefferson, the answers all encompass what is the wide range of scholastic journalism today.

“I think scholastic journalism has given students an opportunity to hone in on and be recognized for their non- ‘science or technology’ related skills, which is really important and contributes to TJ being a place for people with all sorts of interests,” junior Anant Das, a staff member of the literary magazine, Threshold, said.
No quotes around magazine titles, according to AP Style.

On the yearbook staff, sophomore Bita Golshani also uses utilizes scholastic journalism as a way to take a break from the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) curriculum offered at Jefferson.

“Sometimes people are interested in an activity but downplay their interest either because it is not of an academic variety or because their friends might not be interested as well,” Golshani said. “Yearbook makes it really easy to experience a lot of different activities first hand.”

Scholastic journalism, as many may not know, is not just the newspaper publication. The JEA encompasses a wide range of publications, such as yearbook, literary magazine, broadcast journalism and, online news publications in addition to printed news publications .

While working on Threshold, Das and the magazine’s staff work on layout design, read and edit writing submissions, and even get the chance to write some of their own pieces for the publication.

“I really love the discussions about pieces during the first half of the year, because it gives me an opportunity to speak my mind about a piece and not worry about whether or not it’s a popular opinion,” Das said. “‘Threshold’ fosters the type of environment where all opinions are welcome.”