Last September, New York City was hit by unprecedented rainfall, resulting in widespread flash floods. One of the places affected was Pace High School in Chinatown, where a leak damaged the rubber flooring in the basement gym. When the floor eventually dried, it became uneven and nearly unusable.

Despite the school’s repeated requests to the City Council for funding to fix the issue, no response came for months. However, in December, The Pacer, the school’s student-run newspaper, published a 700-word article highlighting the problem.

This time, the City Council took action, allocating $750,000 for the gym’s renovation, as confirmed by both a local council member and the school principal.

For The Pacer, a student-run outlet just four years in existence, this was a significant victory and highlighted a disappearing trend in New York City schools. Only 27 percent of the city’s public high schools have student newspapers, down from about 50 percent in 2009.

The situation is even worse in schools with high poverty rates: only seven out of the 100 public schools with the most economically disadvantaged students have student-run publications, according to Baruch College.

“When I started journalism class, everything just clicked,” said Katelynn Seetaram, the 16-year-old editor-in-chief of The Pacer, who won a sports writing award from Baruch last year. “I realized, this is what I want to do.”

The decline in school newspapers isn’t just a New York issue. Nationwide, increasing costs, changing attitudes towards the media, the difficulty in finding faculty advisors, and a greater focus on STEM subjects have contributed to the reduction of high school journalism programs, especially in underprivileged schools.

To address this, local media organizations and universities in states like California, Illinois, and Texas have partnered to train teachers to lead journalism electives and workshops for aspiring young reporters.

New York City is launching its own effort: Journalism for All, a pilot program created by a partnership between the Youth Journalism Coalition (run by the nonprofit The Bell), the City Council, and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

The program will introduce journalism curriculums in 30 high schools, offering teacher training and $15,000 in start-up grants to establish student publications. Four students from each participating school will also receive summer internships at local newsrooms.

Applications for schools to join the program open on Thursday.

“I’ve always wanted a student newspaper, and I know a lot of other students do, too,” said Camila Sosa, a 17-year-old senior at Uncommon Collegiate Charter High School in Brooklyn and a member of the Youth Journalism Coalition.

Sosa has already nominated her school for the program, adding that the administration often justifies not having a journalism elective by emphasizing investments in STEM programs. “They say, ‘We’re investing a lot in robotics,’ but now there’s a program that can support a journalism class, so we’re not left out.”

Even before the application process started, nearly 70 schools expressed interest in the 30 available spots, according to Kyle Finck, director of the Youth Journalism Coalition.

The coalition’s student members played a key role in advocating for the Journalism for All initiative, organizing a rally called “J-Day” outside City Hall in April to encourage the Council to support their cause.

The initiative, backed by $3 million from the City Council and private donors, is expected to significantly increase the number of Black and Latino students in journalism classes across New York, said Taylor McGraw, executive director of The Bell.

On Thursday, Councilwoman Rita Joseph, chair of the Education Committee, will introduce a bill requiring the Department of Education to provide annual data on school journalism programs.

Last month, the Council passed another bill urging the creation of student newspapers in all public high schools across the city.

Joseph emphasized the need for young journalists to tell the stories of their neighborhoods, focusing on resilience, immigration, and community history.

Similar efforts are taking place in California, where the nonprofit newsroom CalMatters launched its Youth Journalism Initiative in 2022 to help teachers build their confidence in teaching journalism and strengthen student publications statewide.

Michael Lozano, who leads the California initiative, said it’s important to empower student journalists to cover their communities responsibly. “In the past, students felt their communities and schools were either ignored or misrepresented in the media.”

Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, said there’s no national data tracking high school newspapers, but the trend of declining student publications has been evident for at least a decade. He noted that student media programs are expensive, typically benefiting more affluent schools, which creates a “visible gap” between those schools and less wealthy ones.

Beyond finances, student journalism often highlights issues that schools with fewer resources would prefer not to confront, Hiestand said. “Student voices can be inconvenient for administrators.”

The Student Press Law Center helps students lobby for legislation protecting student journalists. In May, Minnesota’s governor signed a “New Voices” bill, making it the 18th state to pass such a law. However, a similar bill in New York that would protect student-run newspapers from school censorship did not pass this year.

Liza Greenberg, a 17-year-old senior at Bronx High School of Science and a Youth Journalism Coalition member, is actively lobbying New York’s legislature to pass the bill.

Greenberg has been involved in student journalism since middle school, where she helped start a newspaper. At Bronx Science, she now writes for The Science Survey, an 86-year-old school publication.

“Starting a newspaper in middle school was one of the hardest things I’ve done,” Greenberg said. “And that was at a well-resourced school. I can only imagine how much harder it is for students in less-privileged schools.”

As members of the Youth Journalism Coalition, students like Greenberg, Seetaram, and Sosa met with City Council members and testified at hearings in support of the Journalism for All initiative. While Greenberg is still unsure about her career path — she’s considering medicine or public health — all three young journalists plan to join their college newspapers after high school.