Why Journalism Matters_Persuasive Speech

Why Journalism Matters

By Victor Torres, Christian Raya, Daisy Gasca-Gonzalez, Abraham Carillo, and Hugo Rosiles

This Public Address was Delivered to the South Monterey County Unified School District School Board at the Board Meeting on March 27th, 2024. It was written collaboratively by each of the Journalists named below. After this speech was delivered, Superintendent Dr. Cota assured those present that Journalism would continue to be offered during the 2024-2025 school year at Greenfield High School.

VICTOR TORRES:

Dear Members of the Board,

Thank you for allowing us to speak with you today. It is our pleasure to present to you the latest edition of the GHS student paper, The Bruin’s Eye as well as our January edition from earlier this year. A digital edition of this March paper will go live on the school website tomorrow.

But we haven’t just come here to present you our work. We have also come to make a request.

We have been informed by our Journalism teacher, Ms. Frase, that looking forward to the 2024-2025 school year, the Greenfield High journalism class may disappear.

More specifically, any elective with an enrollment of less than 20 students, which includes Journalism, will NOT be offered as a class next year.

As this year’s journalists, we’d like to give you a few of our reasons why Journalism matters to us, and why we believe GHS should keep it as an available elective next year.

CHRISTIAN RAYA: Journalism helps us develop our wor

Through journalism, we express our creativity through writing. Many of us view writing as a form of punishment, but with this class, we are given the freedom to write about what matters to us in an environment open to new ideas and with less pressure.

One of our goals as students working towards CLAW (which stands for Collaborative Leaders Achieving Worldview) is developing our worldview.

As students we want our peers to both understand and voice out their place in the world and world events. Journalism does this by allowing journalists to express their views and inform our readers about world events and campus events.

VICTOR TORRES: Journalism helps us improve our language skills.

Many students that attend Greenfield High School are learning English as their second language and in comparison to native English speakers, may not be as proficient in writing and speaking the language. But through writing about topics that matter to us,

and interacting with our peers, we develop our knowledge of the English language and of writing in a more natural way.

Additionally, through this development of understanding the English language, we learn skills crucial to everyday life. Even more importantly, by being journalists we’re learning to strengthen our writing to apply for scholarships and colleges.

DAISY GASCA-GONZALEZ: Journalism helps us to connect with our community.

Through journalism, we create strong connections with our community by communicating what is going on in school and our campus. This includes topics that matter to students and youth in this community such as sports, fundraisers, and technology.

Furthermore, it allows us to become aware of events and issues in our community in Greenfield, California, and the U.S. and to become more civically engaged.

ABRAHAM CARILLO: In fact, Journalism lets us participate in our First Amendment right to a free press.

While many Americans like to cite the First Amendment as a right, or how the Constitution protects the free press in our country, the over-mention of it shouldn’t diminish the importance of this right.

We’ve studied the rich history of early Americans rebelling against the British by passing out pamphlets and flyers to their fellow man. As journalists, we get to participate in this rich history by reporting the injustices that happen around us, free from censors.

When we are encouraged by our school to investigate and report on events we are exercising our right to dive further into topics that are often not spoken about. Topics that NEED to be relayed to the masses in order to keep them informed.

HUGO ROSILES: Journalism also allows us to build meaningful relationships with other journalists.

Journalism is an elective class that students of any grade level can join without prerequisites. This year we are a class of 9 Juniors and 8 Seniors. Together we make a team of 17 journalists.

The mix of different grade levels in journalism allows for the building of relationships that would not have been able to happen within other classes since the students are interacting with underclassmen, for example through interviews, and getting quotes for the newspaper.

DAISY GASCA-GONZALEZ: Finally, Journalism also allows us to elevate the voices and needs of others.

As journalists, we are provided with an outlet (The Bruin’s Eye) that we can use to bring awareness to issues or topics that matter to us. These topics and issues can range from local to national, and many times affect a wide range of people.

A lot of the time, the people most affected by hardships have no easily accessible or trustworthy way to voice their concerns or opinions. Journalism allows us to give the spotlight to people whose voices might otherwise go unheard.

VICTOR TORRES: Thank you for your time and we hope you will consider our words.

For these reasons and many more, we ask that you intervene and make sure that Journalism is offered as a class next year regardless of whether 20 students are enrolled or not.

Thank you.