Reporting and Making the News : Hard-Hitting Narbonne Staff Closes Out an Award-Winning Year

Nathaniel Narbonne High School’s newspaper, The Green & Gold, wouldn’t be doing its job if it ignored the usual staples of high school journalism: prom night, prep sports and controversies over student dress codes.

But the stories that earned the award-winning weekly newspaper national recognition this year were those with a harder edge--stories about gang shootings, thefts and first-person accounts of students touched by the recent riots.

“They cover so much ground,” said Norbert Sparrow, editor in chief of the Noise, a teen-oriented magazine that selected the paper the best in the Greater Los Angeles area last month. “They don’t just talk about room activities or the minor occurrences in high schools that students tend to inflate. They get outside of the campus and they discuss social issues.”

The newspaper staff, which in March was ranked by the Columbia Scholastic Press Assn. among the top 5% of high school newspapers in the nation, published its last paper of the school year last week. The student journalists wrapped up the year by meeting one last time to have lunch and say goodby.

They were not, however, the only ones reflecting on what made their paper such a success.

Edmund J. Sullivan, director of the Columbia Scholastic Press, which gave the paper a Silver Crown award this spring in its competition, said journalism adviser Alison Rittger deserves kudos for teaching the students the elements of responsible and accurate journalism. He also said credit is due the school’s administrators for allowing the staff to operate with enough freedom to write about topics that are interesting to teachers as well as students.

“She is an excellent teacher, and it clearly communicates with the quality of work that the students are able to maintain,” Sullivan said.

Whereas most high school newspapers find it a stretch to come out with just one or two editions every month, The Green & Gold, which has been a consistent award-winner, has been a weekly publication for the past seven of Rittger’s 10 years as adviser--despite funding cutbacks within the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The four- to eight-page newspaper, which has a circulation of about 2,500, operated with $5,875 in district funds and about $4,000 in advertising revenue during the 1991-92 school year. Rittger, who had requested about $8,000 from the district, said the paper has had to print fewer pages and use less color because of the cutbacks.

Rittger said the students are largely responsible for making the paper readable and relevant. Although most of the paper’s staffers are among the school’s top students, they are not sheltered from the realities of urban life that often touch the campus. And the stories they write reflect that, she said.

“Graffiti, gang affiliation, truancy, tardiness, drugs, cigarette smoking, selling drugs, vandalism--all those things are at this school, but at the same time, there’s a strong education program here too,” Rittger said. “You have to try in a real-world school to find a good balance between telling both truths about your school.”

And both truths are present on the campus.

Narbonne High, a sprawling campus in Harbor City bordered by Torrance and Lomita, is home to both a regular high school program, with 1,600 students, and a math-science magnet program that drew 340 students this year.

The student population is 50% Latino, 21% Anglo, 15% Asian and 12% African-American, and the campus is located in the heart of a community that has several active gangs.

And though Narbonne High has a plethora of campus clubs and activities and sends about 30% of its students to four-year colleges, it also has a three-year cumulative dropout rate of about 21%.

“We’re not particularly highbrow and we’re not political,” Rittger said. “Our student body is even less so than the staff. Yet we have to be read, and it’s an interesting challenge. . . . I’m not sure people expect this to be as well-written and attractive as it is.”

The tabloid-style newspaper has something for everyone: news, editorials, letters to the editor, student opinion pieces, in-depth features, sports, entertainment and even restaurant reviews.

When rioting spread throughout Los Angeles in late April and early May, the staff moved speedily to produce a paper that helped make sense of the crisis. On May 8, it produced an eight-page paper that included several student editorials and a first-person account by a Korean-American staff member who had helped patrol his family’s business with a shotgun.

Staff members also polled more than 300 students to see how they felt about media coverage.

The paper’s editors, who put in between 12 and 15 hours a week to produce the paper, use computers to assemble the pages and have them printed at the Gardena Valley News.

Desks and shelves generously stocked with literature and journalism guides fill the newsroom, which doubles as a classroom for Rittger’s English students. News clippings, reading assignments and signs containing journalistic adages such as “Accuracy is the watchword of a good reporter” clutter the pale yellow walls.

The room mirrors Rittger’s style: casual but quirky. She wears jeans, shocking pink socks and silver pelican earrings; her eyeglasses are taped together at one ear. To the students, she is both mentor and pal.

As she waited for her 41-student staff to trickle into the newsroom for its last meeting before closing shop for summer break, Rittger’s mood fluctuated between sad and playful.

“It’s got to be fun,” she said before twirling a buzzing noisemaker in the form of a bee over her head. But she soon added, “I’m going to be really sad in about an hour.”

When the staff was finally assembled about 10:30 a.m., Rittger gave the sophomores and juniors a journalism final exam that included true and false questions such as “Never miss an opportunity to put the names of your friends in the paper.” (False).

The graduating seniors, meanwhile, munched on sandwiches and potato chips that Rittger bought for the occasion. When the younger students finished their exam, Rittger initiated an end-of-the-year goodby ritual in which she and the students exchanged hugs, anecdotes and tears.

Feasting on chocolate cake that said “I’ll miss everyone,” the students listened intently as Rittger went around the room telling the students with sometimes cutting sarcasm what it was like to work with them.

“Despite the fact that I raise my voice and use profanity once in a while,” she began, as the students broke into laughter, “I don’t think the paper has ever looked better than it did this year.”

She described news editor Allan Payumo as “adorable, very adorable.” But lest anyone accuse her of getting maudlin, she added: “It doesn’t say anything about ability.” She also noted that managing editor Ather Ali “made a real lot of mistakes,” but then thanked him for taking so much abuse.

The seniors later returned the favor.

Editor in chief David Lee told his younger colleagues that “no matter how things go or how you feel about certain things, Mrs. Rittger is there for you. She’s there to do good for you. I really want you guys to listen to her.”

Sports editor Jimmy Kwon, 17, who plans to attend UC Berkeley in the fall, was reflective about his experiences on the newspaper.

“It’s pretty amazing that a public school, with all the cuts and that, is competing against private schools, that we have become the best high school paper in Southern California,” he said.

News editor Sharon Filio, 18, relayed that she “kind of grew up here. I never really talked before. Now I talk, talk, talk. I learned a lot. . . . I’m going to miss all of you guys.”

When they finished reminiscing, several seniors handed Rittger small gifts. One student gave her a coffee mug, another a charm necklace from Nepal.

As the ceremony came to a close, incoming editor in chief MiRan Kim, 16, was by turns confident and tearful about her ability to continue the legacy of excellence.

“I have such a tough act to follow,” Kim said, just minutes before hugging Filio and breaking into tears. “But I’m going to try my hardest. We have the talent, and we’re going to beat (this year’s staff) and win even more awards.”