You probably just go to the GZAAT Gazette website, choose the article you want and read it, but are you familiar with how this all started? How the newspaper club was established? Well, keep reading to find out!
American academy’s English teacher Anthony Schierman is the founder of the school’s newspaper club. The club was established in 2007, the first year Mr. Anthony started teaching at the school. According to the interview with Mr. Anthony, the club was drastically smaller in the first years than compared to now.
Interviewer: How did you come up with the idea, was this club in your school when you were a student?
Anthony Schierman: Yes, the schools I went to in the US did have student newspapers although I was not involved with them. The way that this started was that before I was working at the American Academy, I had been working as a newspaper editor in Tbilisi, on newspapers, such as “Messenger” and “Georgia Today”, which were on English. Then, when I came to the American Academy, during my interview with the school’s director at that time, he said that they had a position opened for the English teacher and I could apply for that, but he also asked and recommended me to start a school newspaper club. So that is how I started. It was kind of part of my original contract.
Interviewer: Were as many students joining the club in the beginning years as it is now?
Anthony Schierman: No, not at all! In the beginning, it was very few. In the first year, we had seven students probably and two editors in chief. One was a student named Vlad Raskin and the second one was Natela Johnston. In that year, we did not have software or anything at the school needed to get the newspaper printed, so we would have to go to the newspaper office of “Georgia Today” and they allowed us to use their software to do the layout and also helped us to print it. So the first few years went like this.
Interviewer: According to some students who are members of your club, they started to think about journalism concerning their future jobs but they had not even thought about it before joining the Gazette club. Was it one of your goals when starting the club?
Anthony Schierman: Yeah of course! I think the type of writing that journalists do for the newspaper is pretty different for the kind of writing they have to do for the English class for example. And some people enjoy it, so I hope that people who try it will really enjoy the process and then see that as a possibility to have a career.
Interviewer: Do you think transforming into an online website raised the popularity for your club?
Anthony Schierman: First of all, this year, we had the most interest of people wanting to join our club ever and right now we have the largest staff we have ever had. And I think that is definitely because of the pandemic and the fact that people are stuck at home, looking for things to do and ways to get involved and I am very happy that the newspaper has been able to make so many people stay involved like that. As far as the popularity of the reading, when the website first went up, it was a novelty and almost everyone from school went to look at it at least once. That was great although the time since then the popularity has decreased. If you look at the number of views that the articles have been getting, you notice that the earlier articles have been getting like hundreds of views while now some articles are getting ten or twenty views. When we were printing the newspaper, it was kind of an event when it was coming out and people were coming to get a copy of it to read. This was happening once a month. Now, the articles on the website are getting published every day, maybe people lose interest or they don’t remember to check. So, that's one of the challenges we are having right now, which is to figure out how to keep people interested in coming to the website and what we need to do to maintain that interest.
Interviewer: If we eventually come back to school, will you keep doing this on the this on the website or return to printing the copies?
Anthony Schierman: I think we will keep doing it that way as we have now. In the end, online is better. We just need to figure out the ways to make it more interesting and exciting to read.
One of the club’s first editor in chief Vlad Raskin was interviewed about his experience in the club:
Interviewer: Anthony mas told us that during your years at AAT you used to go to the post office which was not in the school and print the copies of the gazette there. Can you tell us what you remember from that experience?
Vlad Raskin: I have very vague memories of going to a drab old building to get the gazette printed and not much else. It’s funny how selective memory can be, even for a thing so recent. Perhaps there’s a caveat here for you all – cherish the simple, mundane moments.
Interviewer: This year, twenty and more students are part of the club which is ten times bigger than during your days. Did you expect this club to gain this amount of popularity at our school?
Vlad Raskin: If I did not expect the gazette to be flourishing ten years later, it was only because I didn’t think that far into the future at your age. With that being said, I’m very happy to hear that it’s going strong. High school students spend a lot of time writing essays about topics they don’t have much say in, so I think it’s valuable to have an outlet to practice thinking and writing about the things that matter to you.
The Gazette Club and the creators of it went through a lot of work to become one of the leading clubs in GZAAT today. Let's take a moment and appreciate Anthony Schierman for his amazing work and delay in building and developing the Newspaper Club and also a lot of students who are actively engaged in the process! For everyone reading this article, it will be great if you help to spread out the word about our website, for even more people to become engaged, visit it more often and keep strengthening the school spirit!
Edited by Keta Tavartkiladze
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