Lobos nip competition in high school newspaper contest

(Times photo - Cindy Yurth)

Lobo Nation reporter Danielle Le Beau takes a break from her story to show her fangs and flash a peace sign during newspaper class at Many Farms High School Tuesday.

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Mountz teaches English and journalism at Many Farms High School, a Bureau of Indian Education school, which means he rides herd on the school's award-winning newspaper staff.

But on Tuesday, he wasn't even celebrating when the Navajo Times stopped by his classroom.

"I would have preferred a first," he shrugged. "We probably just won because we entered."

That's not true, as it turns out.

According to the ANA, 16 schools entered the contest. First place St. Gregory's is a prestigious prep school in Tucson, and it's a safe bet its students have access to more than the three laptops and color printer that comprise Many Farms' newspaper production resources.

Plus, Lobo Nation is only 3 years old.

"The school had a newspaper back in the '90s, but it's been a while," Mountz said.

A quick look at Lobo Nation's predecessor shows that it was published before computer-aided design and easy access to color printing.

The Lobo Nation is set apart by its splashy layout, with color on every page, and short, sweet first-person articles that read almost like printed blogs.

"Remember when it was really windy weekend?" one weather story read. "It didn't just feel like a hurricane, it almost was."

The story went on to relate that wind speeds in Many Farms reached 71 mph, just three miles per hour short of hurricane-force.

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"I look for anything that's very interesting, that someone else might want to know," said Lobo Nation reporter Lavine John, who's thinking about studying journalism when she graduates, as is her colleague Danielle Le Beau.

Le Beau is today dressed as a vampire cat, complete with fangs. (It's not to intimidate her sources. Apparently hip teens are coming to school as their favorite manga characters these days.)

Lobo Nation also sports a six-panel comic by Kree Begay and will serialize Jamie Claw's manga novel - as soon as she finishes a chapter.

The crew of six, who are actually able to take newspaper production for credit as a class, cover their school pretty thoroughly. Not a field trip or a sports event goes by without at least a wink by the Nation, and the latest idea is to review the movies screened at the school's movie night.

And, even though the newspaper is free and handed out in the halls, they're always looking for ways to increase circulation. An extremely effective ploy right now is the word search puzzle. The first reader to turn in a completed puzzle gets a small prize and her picture in the next Lobo Nation.

"We usually come out at the beginning of fifth hour, and by the end of the hour, we already have five or six puzzles turned in," Mountz said.

Lobo Nation publishes every two weeks, more or less.

Only once has the paper drawn the ire of the school's administration. Mountz has trouble keeping the pride out of his voice as he recounts the story.

"We had a staff member who was disabled," he said. "The administration had promised her an accessible house if she came to work here."

The house was started, sure enough. But as the months went by, no observable work had been done on it. Lobo Nation started publishing a photo of the house in every issue, along with the number of days since the work was started.

About Day 300, the administration put a stop to that, Mountz recalled. The staffer eventually moved away without ever having the accessible abode she was promised.

The staff's favorite issue to work on is the annual April Fool's edition, in which Mountz' only rule is that there not be a grain of truth in the whole paper. Last year's edition featured a story about environmentalists protesting the use of an endangered species, the wolf, as the school's mascot.

"The continued exploitation of the lobo by jocks is no longer acceptable in our modern society," blusters a fictitious wolf-hugger.

Mountz, who started out in journalism at Indiana University before switching to education, would like to set the students on more serious, in-depth stories, but it's hard to do with a different crew coming in every year.

"I just get them started on the basics and the school year's over," he complained.

He's working on getting the school to move the newspaper class to the career and technical education program. He'll offer a computer-aided design class first that will be a prerequisite for the journalism class.

"That way I won't spend the whole year teaching the technical stuff, and by the time I've had them for two or three years, they'll be prepared for a career," he said.

The real goal of Lobo Nation, Mountz said, is to turn out more Native journalists.

"Navajo kids have a lot to say," he said. "If you can just get them to focus on what they're doing and treat it professionally, there's a lot of talent to be channeled that way."

And maybe a first-place prize to be won.

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