School newspapers thousands of miles apart team up to heal from wildfires

After a wildfire decimated a California high school's newsroom, destroying its cameras, computers and archived newspapers spanning six decades, one of the first offers of help that its journalism adviser, Lisa Nehus Saxon, received came from the other side of the country. Claire Smith, founding executive director of Temple University's sports media center, had known Lisa Nehus Saxon since they helped carve out a place for women journalists in Major League Baseball more than 40 years ago. They'd supported each other through the days of being barred from locker rooms, and now, with much of Palisades Charter High School damaged, Smith wanted to be there for her friend again. "I just thought, 'What can we do? How can we help with healing?'" Smith said. Smith traveled from Philadelphia to deliver the result of that offer: a university paper featuring the high school students' articles. Across nearly a dozen pages, the insert showcased articles on price gouging in the rental market after the wildfire and the school returning to in-person lessons, along with poignant firsthand accounts of losing everything to the fire. There were also poems and hand-drawn pictures by students from Pasadena Rosebud Academy, a transitional kindergarten through eighth-grade school in Altadena, California, that was destroyed in the fire. Wildfires in January ravaged the Los Angeles area, wiping out nearly 17,000 structures, including homes, schools, businesses and places of worship. The Palisades high school, made up of about 3,000 students in Los Angeles, saw about 40% of its campus damaged and had to move temporarily into an old Sears building. Nehus Saxon estimated that around a quarter of its newspaper staff members lost their homes, with some forced to move out of the community and switch schools. This project, she and Smith said, was a way to give students a project to focus on after the tragedy while also providing them a place to tell a larger audience the experience of their community. Smith said she thought the project would be healing for the students, "but also give them something that they could hold in their hands and, when they grow up, show their children and grandchildren." This article was provided by The Associated Press.