Eighth grade students from Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta learned about community journalism and the process of printing a newspaper through collaboration with The Lincoln County News this fall.
This marks the third year staff from LCN have worked with students in Kelly Girard’s language arts classes during their investigative journalism unit.
In early November, Maia Zewert, marketing and engagement coordinator for LCN, visited Girard’s eighth grade classes to kick off the investigative journalism unit and speak about the newspaper and reporting.
“The annual visits to Kelly’s classes are one of the highlights of my job,” Zewert said. “The students always have some insightful and surprising questions about what actually happens at the newspaper.”
Recently, Girard’s classes visited Lincoln County Publishing Co. on Wednesday mornings during the printing of The Lincoln County News. The students learned about the printing process from LCN Publisher Chris Roberts before watching the newspaper press run.
“It’s always fun to see the kids react to the press once it starts up,” Roberts said. “We talked a little bit more about the process than we have before, but the students were interested and had a lot of good questions.”
LCN Editor J.W. Oliver met with the students to speak about the role of journalism as an independent check on government and to talk about their story ideas.
As a wrap-up to the unit, Girard’s students each picked a topic to write an article about. A selection of these articles will be printed in the Dec. 26 edition of The Lincoln County News.
“This is very quickly becoming one of the cornerstone engagement projects at the newspaper, and it’s one the community has really had a positive reaction to,” Zewert said.
The Lincoln County News welcomes requests for classroom visits, job shadows, and tours of the print shop. To make a request, contact Zewert at mzewert@lcnme.com or 563-3171.