The newspaper club at the St Vincent Grammar School (SVGS) has been adopted by SEARCHLIGHT and its members given the opportunity to have some of their best work published in the newspaper.

The offer to the club was made yesterday, March 23 by Clare Keizer, editor of SEARCHLIGHT during an interactive session with members of the club at the school.

Keizer’s visit followed a proposal made by headmaster Hugh Colin Sam to Keizer in October 2022, that SEARCHLIGHT adopt the club and “nurture the students in perfecting their school’s newspaper and becoming good journalists”.

“The impeccable standard set by SEARCHLIGHT newspaper is one which we hope the club can adopt. Ad Astra News would greatly benefit from the exposure to the writing and production process of the SEARCHLIGHT newspaper,” the proposal stated.

The club, which consists of 32 members, published the first edition of its e-paper ‘Ad Astra News’ on Monday, January 16, 2023.

Keizer provided the club with feedback on its first edition and discussed with the members topics such as: “Who is a journalist”, “Why is journalism important”, “What is news” and “Qualities of a good journalist”.

During the session, Keizer took the boys through the basics of writing a news story. She emphasised the importance of writing a good lead to draw your readers in, how new information is introduced as the story progresses and how a story can be given vibrancy through the use of quotations.

The discussion touched on the importance of maintaining the anonymity of sources, ethical journalism, defamation, objectivity, balance, the roles of the editor and reporters and the value of photographs and videos.

Also present at yesterday’s presentation were teachers Sherries King, Shani Williams and Chevern Jack who supervise the activities of the club.

Jada Chambers, a 19-year-old trainee multimedia reporter at SEARCHLIGHT, who was present, spoke briefly about her experience so far in journalism.

The SEARCHLIGHT editor told the boys that she is willing to reserve half page in each edition of the Weekend SEARCHLIGHT to publish news and opinion pieces written by students of secondary schools in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

“I intend to write to the other secondary schools and also make this offer to them, so you will have a lot of competition. So make sure you do your best work,” Keizer said.

Students who are at least 15 years old were also invited to apply to become Correspondents of the Commonwealth youth blog yourcommonwealth.org, for which Keizer was recently appointed site editor.

YourCommonwealth.org is a website created and crafted by young people, students and emerging youth leaders from the 54 member states of the Commonwealth. It is a platform for the voices of young people from countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Americas, Europe and the Pacific to be heard.

Keizer said at present, there are no Correspondents from St Vincent and the Grenadines, so she hoped that very soon, one or two Vincentians will qualify.

“Being a Commonwealth Correspondent provides you with an international platform for your work and makes you eligible for opportunities that may come up from time to time around the Commonwealth,” Keizer said.

The members of the club thanked Keizer and Chambers for the visit, describing it as “enlightening” and asking that they return soon.