Taking a cue from Donald Trump, Greg Kothesakis and Christina Panouis had a clear goal when they became editors-in-chief of New Hyde Park Memorial High School’s student newspaper: “Make Chariot Great Again.”
The soon-to-be graduates and their 13 fellow editors succeeded — the Chariot took second place for “Best Overall Newspaper” and 38 other honors at the Long Island Press High School Journalism Awards, evidence of their work in the last to years to turn the paper around, English teacher Mike Stencel said.
“Last year and this year by far are the two years where the newspaper changed in a positive way,” said Stencel, who is finishing his eighth and final year as the Chariot’s adviser. “The identity changed. It looked like … a professional newspaper.”
Kothesakis, Panouis and the rest of the Chariot staff have put a greater focus on issues and stories that most interest and affect students themselves, Kothesakis said.
For example, Kothesakis set aside two pages for columns from editors to give student voices a larger presence in the paper, he said.
The Chariot also published two Muslim students’ first-person perspective on Islamophobia in December following the terrorist attacks in Paris, which also won a Long Island Press award, Stencel said.
The paper also ran a profile of Rory McGonigle, a student who died from cancer earlier this year.
“If we’re reporting on say something in Syria and we just say the cold hard facts, obviously we’re not there on the ground. We got that from another news source,” said Kothesakis, who plans to study international relations at City College in the fall. “So the menality in that is that it’s not really genuine to be just publishing something that someone else wrote.”
The paper looks much “more professional” from when Stencel first became the adviser, Kothesakis said. There are fewer large advertisements, no puzzles, less fluff and less “wasted space” on the pages, he said.
Kothesakis wanted the Chariot to hearken back to the 1960s and 1970s, when more students read the paper because it covered important issues and events that interested them, he said. Readership is up this year as a result, he said.
“There was sort of a pervasive shift away from professionalism (in the past),” Kothesakis said. “… The ads are necessary, but things like crossword puzzles and things like that, those aren’t.”
Starting in 10th grade, students can take Stencel’s journalism class to learn the basics of news reporting, writing and editing, with the opportunity to have their stories published in the Chariot, Stencel said.
Those who are talented and interested have the opportunity to join the editorial staff as an extracurricular activity, he said.
Twelve of the Chariot’s 15 editors are graduating this year, Stencel said. Many of them spent more than one year on the paper’s staff, which helped continue the effort to revitalize the paper that started last year, he said — the Chariot also won third place at last year’s Long Island Press awards.
Though he and Stencel would often argue about story ideas, Kothesakis nominated him for the Long Island Press’ High School Newspaper Adviser of the Year award, which he won.
Stencel credited Kothesakis’ and Panious’ leadership with the paper’s success. Kothesakis is an “attack dog” who is “one of the most attentive, hands-on editors I’ve ever had,” while Panouis was often his foil, a “voice of reason” in the newsroom, Stencel said.
As he steps down as the paper’s adviser, Stencel said he is not concerned about keeping the Chariot well staffed. Most of the editors will be 11th-graders, he said, and Kothesakis’ sister Eleni, a rising junior, will take the helm as one of the editors-in-chief, he said.
“It was sort of a unique dynamic working with her and telling her what to do, because it’s weird giving her a deadline and then knowing that I can go home and still push her for the same deadline at the dinner table,” Kothesakis said.
