Costa Mesa High returning to print and the Hitching Post
Alex Chan is the education reporter for the Daily Pilot, Huntington Beach Independent and Coastline Pilot. Prior to joining Times Community News, she spent two years writing for the Orange County Register’s Varsity Arts section. She earned her degree in literary journalism from UC Irvine.
Costa Mesa High School’s print newspaper The Hitching Post will be making a comeback after a few years’ hiatus.
Matt Hancock’s journalism class at the school will resurrect the publication this year.
“It’s been at least three years since it last ran,” Hancock said. “We’re still debating what sections to put in, but the goal is to make the paper something that the students want to get their hands on.”
The Hitching Post was the high school’s original student newspaper dating back decades.
During the Post’s abscence, the campus launched online newspaper The Equestrian as a platform for student body news.
“I don’t think that people get the same feeling from a virtual paper,” Costa Mesa High principal Jacob Haley said. “It wasn’t creating enough conversation. When a print paper is delivered to a classroom, students are excited to read it. It really becomes the voice on your campus.”
Whether both publications will run at the school this year is still up for discussion, Hancock said.
For now, the journalism students are grasping the fundamentals of news writing.
“First, we are going to learn the difference between writing for journalism and writing for an English class because there are so many differences,” Hancock said. “There’s no 20 sentence paragraphs and the last sentence doesn’t need to be as important as the first sentence in journalism. We’re all starting from scratch and that’s exciting.”
Hancock said he hopes the first edition for the Post’s return will run at the end of October.