Only 20 percent of New York schools have newspapers

Is the school newspaper vanishing?

A survey of New York high schools indicates only about 20 percent have newspapers, though some are now starting to publish online news:

Of existing papers, critics are quick to point out that some are skimpy newsletters or quarterlies, too often little more than publicity pages for the school. "If you look at the papers you'll see that many have little to them. They don't write about anything going on in the school. They don’t seem to give people a way to be serious school citizens," says Leslie Seifert, an editor at Newsday who began a high school newspaper at Middle College High School in Queens in 1994. The Middle College High School News was entirely uncensored and covered controversial topics like drug addiction and violence at school.

Even at top-tier schools, papers like the one Seifert produced are often impossible. While these schools have been recognized for superior writing and production, censorship remains a problem. In 2005, the editors-in-chief of the Science Survey at Bronx Science wrote an anonymous article condemning the censorship of their paper by the school principal and distributed the article off school grounds. "Don't let the administration's obsession with conserving our school's 'impressive' reputation dampen your creative spirit," they wrote.