The New:

Fieldston has an incredible commitment to deep intellectual exploration and the building of thoughtful and persuasive minds. We hope The Fieldston News will function as an extension of this already established mission. In addition to the rich content of the newspaper, this publication is a pedagogical tool. The Fieldston News is a place to learn about writing and practice various aspects of journalism. Writing for a newspaper poses challenges and opportunities different than those that come with an English essay. Learning to construct questions, to interview, to think critically and curiously, to choose an angle, and to organize thoughts, are skills crucial not only to writing an effective article, but to fulfilling engaged scholarship at large. We welcome students of all ages with all levels of experience to come to our Tuesday meetings and take on articles. We are a school, and so the process of producing each issue is just as valuable as the final product and we want as many of you as possible to be involved.

In keeping with the tradition of trying to bridge the gap between students and faculty and the administration, we want to feature more editorials and opinion pieces written by all members of the community. We would like to encourage submissions from faculty, staff and administrators and middle schoolers. We want to bring the News back to its roots. This publication should be a trustworthy news source but it should also be the voice of the Fieldston community. We are blessed to have so many creative and insanely intelligent individuals buzzing around inside these brick and stone walls, and we want to hear from them.

Everyone loves seeing Ben Claar’s (VI) witty comics inside the paper. We want to include more student art. In fact, when looking at the mast head for a 2005 issue, we noticed that back then we had a small staff of illustrators (Eleanor’s sister included). In keeping with the creative Fieldston spirit, we have already spoken with some of Fieldston’s most talented artists about forming a partnership with the 2D art majors so that we can feature student drawings in every single issue.

If you have an article that you would like to write, a voice that you want others to hear, please reach out to us. You can email us, text us, call us, reach us on social media, or tap us on the shoulder in the hallway. We want The Fieldston News to be the best that it can be, which means that in addition to our lovely team of staff writers, we need to have lots of contributors.

If you ever have a concern or question about something that is printed in the news, we gladly invite you to write us a “Letter to the Editor.”

We are thrilled to be the incoming editors for The Fieldston News. Our editors emeritus — David Fishman, Babe Howard, Drew Semler, and Jacob Cader — will truly be missed. They defied the stigma of school journalism in every possible way–anyone who knows this publication knows that it is not simply a “cute school newspaper”, but an indispensable source of information, responsible for maintaining transparency in our community and serving as a voice for students who feel they have been left out of the institutional agenda.

As the new editors, we hope to maintain the integrity of this publication and uphold its reputation as an honest and dependable source of news. Accordingly, we have specific goals of our own that we would like to accomplish during our time as editors which we feel will strengthen The Fieldston News:

1. We hope to host a workshop every Tuesday during clubs where student writers can come and get help with their articles and ask questions about the journalistic process (what are the best ways to interview someone, how do I write with an objective tone, how do I keep my article concise and informative?) We are working on recruiting some writers from Writopia to lead some of these workshops as a way to introduce new student journalists to The Fieldston News.

2. We recently attended a journalism summit at the Hewitt School where we heard from and spoke to newspaper editors from various private schools around the city. We would love to partner with some of those schools and learn more about their process and how they run their school publications, in addition to what problems they encounter.

3. We would love to introduce regular columns into the Fieldston News. We are in the process of talking to Jonathan Hazin and Julia Rosenberg about the possibility of a “presidential column” in which the FSG co-presidents write a brief blurb about what has been going on in the school, what new initiatives have been launched, and what they are planning for the future. We also hope to have a sports columnist who will attend and write about Fieldston sports games on a regular basis.

We cannot wait for next year, and we cannot wait to hear from all of you.

Editors-in-Chief: Alex Greenberg, Livia Bokor, Eleanor Paasche
Managing Editors: Rori Sachs, Jane Herz
Design Editors: Gus Aronson, Nate Newhouse

The Old:

Although it is cliché, I had always wanted to be an editor for the Fieldston News.  So when Mr. Montera told me that I was going to be a Managing Editor for 2014-2015, I was ecstatic. I was even more excited when I found out who else I would be working with; 5 of my extremely talented friends: Paul Schorin, Jacob Cader, Babe Howard, Drew Semler, and David Fishman.  Although I was nervous about being the only girl on the editorial staff, I knew that we would all create something great.

And we did.  We published more issues than we thought we could; constantly pushing ourselves to meet our goal of being a bi-weekly newspaper, which we also did.  It was difficult, but we did it nonetheless.

The conclusion of my work as a Managing Editor was bittersweet.  I really had a great time, leading meetings, working with the other editors, formatting issues, editing articles, and I learned a lot, like how to format an issue, how to use Google Drive and how to successfully conduct news meetings.  But, I won’t miss the frustration of articles coming in late or the little (but natural) fights us editors would get into over something supremely stupid.

Even though this year was not without its more negative, tumultuous moments, I wouldn’t take them back for anything.  Working as a Managing Editor at the Fieldston News has been one of my favorite parts of my Fieldston experience.  I loved getting to know the writers and hearing about their interests, I loved reading the articles that were sent in, and, of course, I loved working with our faculty advisor, Mr. Montera.

So, Fieldston community, the community I will be leaving in a matter of days, I hope I, and all of us editors, served you well and that you don’t forget about us.  Frankly, I have a hard time believing that you will.

By Reede Goldberg

High school journalism is a tricky game to play — a balance between reporting the news, removing your bias, and maintaining good relationships with those who write your home reports. Fourteen years at Fieldston — four of those years on The Fieldston News — my passion for digging out the truth, no matter the consequences, remains the same.

This school is undergoing a massive shift in its mission. Consciously or subconsciously, there are changes afoot that will set Fieldston on an entirely new path for the next decade. Writing for the news has given me the opportunity to peel away the veil that too often disguises the beating heart of this institution. From Liz Ramos’ abrupt exit, to the Michael Brown and Eric Garner protests, to Laura Danforth’s impending departure — this newspaper has remained committed to seeking out all narratives; giving a voice to the voiceless. The stories we have published over the past year make me proud to be an editor of The Fieldston News.

To the next editors: continue our legacy of free speech, hold Fieldston accountable for its actions, and fight against those who seek to stifle your voice. You will face pushback, intimidation; do not bend or break. This school, this country was founded on the basis that all of its citizens have the right to speak their minds. As Fieldston starts a new chapter, it will need a strong editorial board to hold on tightly to the vision of our founder, Felix Adler.

In the words of former president John F. Kennedy: “Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed… And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment.”

By David Fishman 

To begin this sort of thing with an anecdote would be terribly clichéd. Anecdotes, little half-reminders of “the facts of life” that they are, are usually clichéd and always seem to fall flat into mindless nodding and “uh huh-ing” and other quirks of agreement. No, these closing remarks will begin with, besides a preamble on what they will not begin with, a Tale of Two Fieldstons. This is, of course, shamelessly stolen from a great leader of our times and his Tale of Two Felixes, but that is an anecdote for another time.

My Tale of Two Fieldstons begins like this. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of tests, it was the age of fests, it was the epoch of Fieldstonians, it was the epoch of Fieldstoners – in short, it was a time to compare things. It gives them importance. Nothing has any value unless it has been matched and contrasted and diagrammed, no? This to that, that to this, etcetera, etcetera, and etcetera. Deed before Creed. Yankees before Red Sox. That water fountain by the gym before that water fountain in the 100s building.

What are my two Fieldstons? One is very nice. It has a quadrangle and a library with thousands of books. It has an active student government. It has marches and bands and sports teams and pep rallies and Senior Dinners and it makes you feel oh so warm and fuzzy inside. It gets pasted on brochures and benefit dinner invitations and Forbes Magazine lists.

One is not so nice. It has people who say that a movie sucks in order to describe how bad it was, those who will “literally kill themselves” if they get a bad grade – a B-, no doubt. It has an administration that seems two-faced, split between rhetoric and reality. It has hyper-activism and hypo-activism in all the wrong places. This Fieldston does not go on brochures or in Master Plans. This Fieldston is pasted on the halls we walk through. It is pasted on our eyes.

Where does this newspaper fit in? Where does print fit in? It is the demand of the Fieldston News and all its associates, printed or otherwise, to write and write fiercely. To lessen the need for comparisons. To make each item stand on its own; to make each one crumble when the time comes. That is the power of print and that is the power print must have at this school.

So, to paraphrase from a great novel, “For the love of God, all of you, please keep writing!”

By Paul Schorin 

While it wouldn’t be right to assert that our time at the paper this year was dominated entirely by a few instances of controversy, I think it’s fair to say that those few events have dictated many of the subsequent decisions we have made as editors. Entering this school year, our primary, most general goal (from my perspective, at least) was centered mainly around output – making sure we printed an issue filled with articles we were proud of every two weeks. I can confidently say that we met that goal, thanks to the determination of those whose writing sits on the rest of this page. While coming up against the administration certainly was never in our agenda, welcoming adversity was. I am proud and humbled to have worked with such an intensely smart group of people to always make sure this paper was furthering the conversation, not just beginning it.

By Babe Howard

We would like to thank the old editors. They held themselves and this publication to the highest standards of integrity, professionalism, and honesty. We hope we will be able to do the same as we welcome the Fieldston News into its 90th year.