ASHLAND — A new generation of junior journalists are ready to tackle Ashland-area news, so long as it’s within the halls of Ashland Middle School.
A group of over two dozen Ashland middle schoolers and two teachers are leading the charge to revamp the school’s existing student news club.
The program got off the ground a few years ago as an email newsletter, with an official website created last year, but this year the students are incorporating more multimedia elements.
“That’s part of our goal this year: we kind of did a relaunch and rebranding for AMS News to try to develop it further,” David Truesdell said. “We’re kicking off this year to really try to step up the professionalism and take things to a further, more developed program than we had had in the past. 

“So it’s been a gradual build but, we’re trying to continue to add more and build it further as we go,” Truesdell said.
Truesdell is an art and graphic design teacher at the middle school, and one of AMS News’ advisors, along with science teacher Linda Michael.
There are three different teams that help create news content: a news writers team, a graphic design team and a video team that meets once monthly after school.
The news and graphic design teams meet regularly, with the seventh graders meeting one week and the eight graders meeting the next.
“The goal has been to get at least one announcement made per student each week that they create at lunch, and sometimes that varies,” Truesdell said. “Then with the videos, we’re trying to create one video each month.”
That content will eventually live on the website, on the school’s website and on the screens around the school.
Student-centered stories
Students are the ones in charge of what stories are published.
“If I’m on the wrestling team, I might want to like, write about stuff like that because you never see that on the TVs out in the lunchroom,” seventh-grader Ivy Thompson said. “And they just replay everything over the week, over and over again, because there’s nothing new.”
Thompson said there aren’t announcements about girls’ wrestling, which has grown in popularity at the school, and she wants to change that.
Seventh-grader Karolyne Cole said she wants to do the same for the softball team.
As for the videos, the students already put out a holiday video at Candy Cane Trail in December, and are now working on the next round of content.
Michael wants students to coordinate the articles with the videos. Students have already expressed interest in doing a profile series on the teachers and coverage on the new indoor track program.
“On the news side, we bring the stories we want to do. We’re just trying to tie in and have videos that would link in with the writing,” Michael said. “My students, they write the stories, 
I just help them edit it do the placement stuff.”
Eighth-grader Olive Knowlton said she joined because, “It’s fun to share what we’re doing in the school and the events that will be happening.”
Addie Cohen, a seventh-grader, said: “Getting to post stuff and make stuff that I know I made and be proud of it and me actually taking the time to make everything really nice and neat is fun.”
Although none of the students were sure if they wanted to pursue a career in journalism, seventh-grader Ella Burns wants to be a graphic designer.
There is a news-writing class at Ashland High School, so students can continue to produce stories after they leave the middle school.