Shefali Luthra of California spent half an hour with instructor John Kuptez after the high school newspaper critique workshop.  Luthra had asked for a translation of the extensive comments he scrawled in green ink on a copy of her high school’s paper. 

“There was more green than black on the paper,” Luthra said. “I was shocked to see so much of it. I was pleased it was there because there’s always room to improve. Most of it was helpful and often it reinforced things we were talking about at home.”

Luthra, a website editor at her school, said she looks forward to relating his critique to her staff of 47 students. 

“Even though he did big X’s on some of the articles, he said that on the whole we had a pretty impressive paper,” she said.

Newspaper critique was only one of many workshops offered during the journalism program at the National High School Institute.  Every week, cherubs attended workshops on topics ranging from sports journalism to column writing, profile writing, arts reviews and website critique.  

Students said they enjoyed the workshops. 

“It was fun,” Luthra said.  “Any workshop with Kupetz was fun.” 

Kupetz opened the workshop with a quiz of 10 frequently misspelled words. 

“The spelling test was eye-opening,” Luthra said.  “I learned that I rely on Spell Check a lot and I opt for the British spellings, which isn’t good because I’m an American journalist.” 

Kupetz reinforced spelling and grammar during each session. 

“You are measured by your mistakes,” he said. 

It was interesting to hear about the different papers that everyone came from, Luthra said. But not knowing a particular school's staff, resources, administrators or the restrictions imposed on a publication can present challenges.

“It was hard for him because he didn’t know our circumstances,” Hannah Geise of Wisconsin said.

Aside from individual critiques, Kupetz focused the workshop on tips for improvement.  He specifically recommended having photos with captions and a staff editorial related to the front-page story.  He also recommended that high school papers cover only school-related news. 

Luthra found the workshop helpful. 

“I would definitely recommend it,” she said.  “What’s more practical than getting a critique so you can bring back what you learned and say, ‘This is how what I learned applies to what we do.’”