In Melanie Coates' journalism class at Catonsville High School, students work with two media outlets in mind: the traditional Comet newspaper and its new online edition.
"I know that's the way things are going," Coates, the journalism adviser, said of her decision to start the site. "We need to try and figure out how to make this work for ourselves."
Mirroring the industry, high school newspaper students and advisers are setting their sights on the Web, complementing the traditional print product or even switching to online news exclusively.
"This is the direction high school media is going," said Jason Wallestad, a journalism adviser and co-founder of the Minnesota-based School Newspapers Online, which designed 70 such sites this year. "This is definitely a big trend."
Besides citing the reality of an Internet-centered generation, many schools say the recent economic downturn has challenged conventional student newspapers, with declining ad sales and reduced school budgets forcing some to cut their size - and others to eliminate them altogether.
The Comet, with a student staff of about 30, is one of a couple of Baltimore County papers to produce online content this year, and several more are looking to do so this fall. A number of other schools - in Baltimore City and Harford, Frederick and Montgomery counties, to name a few - have already moved in that direction.
"For us, it's still a learning curve," said Coates, who uses free site hosting provided by the American Society of News Editors' High School Journalism Initiative.
Junior Zoe Camp, the Comet online editor, said she would like to see its Internet presence grow, and has plans to explore multimedia, podcasts and social networking tools such as Twitter. "We can't just depend on a print medium."
Coates, who monitors what is posted online and printed in the paper, said the Web allows for longer versions of stories and gives beginning journalists an early crack at seeing their names in print, albeit digitally.
Ad revenues, raised to help pay for printing, have dropped this year, making it more difficult to cover the $350 or so it costs to publish a 12-page issue, Coates said.
Her counterparts at Franklin and Perry Hall high schools face similar challenges.
"It's getting almost prohibitive to print out a paper, as much as we'd like to," said Lisa Ancarrow, Franklin's journalism adviser. The Gazette is taking a "baby step" toward the Internet, she said.
