Xocjhil Lino Aiello wrote a story for Roosevelt High’s school newspaper Oct. 29 about the threat federal immigration raids pose to Portland students.
The story provided tips for what students should do when confronted by federal agents.
More than a front-page story, it was the front page story — covering the entire page. Then editors reprinted the story on the second page in Spanish.
The Cardinal Times at Lincoln High School also dedicated its Oct. 29 front page to immigration and protests against federal raids, directing readers to a staff editorial.
“It is the opinion of The Cardinal Times Editorial Board that the deployment of the National Guard will do more harm than good in addressing Portland’s needs,” the editorial read.
There was a time when school administrators would censor such potentially controversial student journalism.
Yet even as the mainstream media faces new challenges from hostile power structures, young journalists are increasingly raising their voices and exercising their First Amendment rights.
And while they take student journalism to new heights, they’re often inspired by the people who came before them.
‘Telling the truth, no matter what’
If there’s a heaven, and it accepts journalists, student editor Lauren Devlin hopes two women are watching over her — and smiling.
One is Ida B. Wells, the crusading journalist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and namesake of Devlin’s Southwest Portland high school. The other is Andrea Patton.
Patton was a crusader in her own right.
The school was named after Woodrow Wilson for 65 years until Portland school officials renamed it in 2021. Patton, an English teacher and former newspaper reporter, was the first journalism adviser in the rebranded building.
She decided the school newspaper, now called The Headlight (inspired by a paper Wells published in the late 19th century), should reflect the legendary journalist’s passion for social justice.
“I mean, Ida B. Wells — c’mon!” said Devlin, The Headlight’s editor in chief this year. “She was the quintessential journalist, really digging her heels in and telling the truth no matter what. She was pretty awesome.”
So was Patton, she said.
However, Devlin knows her mostly by reputation. The 35-year-old teacher was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in the summer of 2022. She died in a matter of weeks.
Students put out The Patton Pages, an eight-page special section dedicated to reporting on social justice issues, the March following her death.
New editions of The Patton Pages intermittently supplement The Headlight throughout the year, even though the newspaper and its website cover social justice issues on a regular basis.
Its most recent edition covers Portland protests, school budget cuts and what do in case of an immigration raid.
Devlin said Patton may be gone, but her brief tenure at The Headlight continues to be felt. The annual Andrea Patton Legacy Scholarship goes to a student who intends to pursue a career in journalism as a means of advancing social justice.
One of the first scholarship recipients was Zoe Toperosky, a former Street Roots correspondent who is now the news editor of the Suffolk Journal at Suffolk University in Boston.
“What started as a quest to fall in love with writing once again forever changed my life,” Toperosky said of Patton. “As a freshman amid the pandemic, I was lost. We all were. I wanted to rediscover my love for writing in a non-English class format, so I took up journalism in the second semester of freshman year, and it forever changed my life.”
Devlin said she wishes she knew Patton, but in a way, she’s not truly gone.
“I feel like I indirectly know her, and if I leave one legacy in this class, I hope it’s that other people follow her example,” Devlin said.
‘Stun grenades being lobbed at her’
Young journalists at South Salem High School have their own guiding spirit watching over their journalism program. Eddy Binford-Ross, however, is still very much alive.
Binford-Ross is now a junior at Georgetown University where she’s the editor in chief of the Georgetown Voice.
When she was the editor-in-chief of The Clypian at South Salem High, she covered protests in Portland and received national press attention when she was tear-gassed by police.
“She left quite a big legacy for us as a news staff,” said Connor Stewart, The Clypian’s current editor-in-chief. “She put us on the map. Her work demonstrated how good a program we have here.”
Even though Binford-Ross is now almost 3,000 miles away, Stewart said her legacy lives on and inspires other students to leave their mark.
“When I generate new ideas for the paper, when I dive deep and look for great stories to tell, I want to leave a legacy at the end of the day so that I’ve left future journalists here with the feeling that they can accomplish whatever they want to accomplish,” he said.
Binford-Ross received the 2021 Student Journalist Impact Award from the Journalism Education Association and the Quill and Scroll (an honor society for student journalists).
Jeff Browne, the executive director of the Quill and Scroll, praised her during the National High School Journalism Conference on April 10, 2021.
“Stun grenades being lobbed at her,” Browne said. “Tear-gassed multiple nights so she couldn’t see straight. Shoved against the wall by police officers. Guns pointed at her by federal officers. This is not what a journalist signs up for when they are placed on an assignment. This is definitely not what a high school journalist is supposed to cover, but Eddy is no regular journalist.”
Binford-Ross also covered the attack on the Oregon State Capitol building on Dec. 21, 2020, by right-wing extremists.
Rachel Alexander, the editor of the Salem Reporter, was equally effusive in her nomination of Binford-Ross for the award. The community would know far less about the assault and the people behind it without Binford-Ross’ tireless work, wrote Alexander.
“She’s been fastidious in documenting the protests themselves and keeping track of the people behind them, breaking multiple stories about the arrests of far-right organizers and their travels to Washington, D.C.,” she said.
‘A vibrant, free press plays a key role’
Student journalists in the past may have confined themselves to whatever their principal would allow, but they had little choice.
Administrators often exercised severe control over what student newspapers printed. Their will was writ in legal stone after the 1988 Supreme Court case of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier.
Justices ruled 5-3 that student newspapers at public high schools could be censored by administrators without violating the First Amendment.
The case evolved out of an attempt by students at Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis County in Missouri to run stories about divorce and pregnancy in 1983. Their principal spiked both stories.
Journalism advocates tried to restore student press rights at the state level. Members of the Oregon chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists kept running into brick walls at the Legislature in Salem.
Even progressive lawmakers told Oregon SPJ that they were unwilling to side with students against the political might of local school districts.
That changed when former state Rep. Larry Galizio (D-Tigard) introduced House Bill 3279 during the 2007 legislative session.
Galizio mustered the political will to get his Oregon New Voices Act through the Legislature with votes of 39 to 21 in the Senate and 16 to 14 in the House along with the support of then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski.
The act restored freedom of the press at Oregon’s publicly funded high schools, colleges and universities. The law states that student media cannot be censored by school officials, except in certain very narrow circumstances.
Such circumstances include material that is defamatory, constitutes an unwarranted invasion of privacy or incites students to take illegal actions.
“Democratic theory makes it very clear that it’s necessary to have a robust free press as a necessary condition of a democracy, and a vibrant, free press plays a key role in fostering an informed citizenry and a free marketplace of ideas,” Galizio said when he outlined his bill for the House Judiciary Committee March 29, 2007.
Freedom of the press must include students, he added.
“The early education and experience of our journalists is very important and is in the best interest of all of us here to help create an environment and conditions in which our student journalists not only learn about the craft of journalism itself but their role as significant voices in our communities,” he said.
Stewart said administrators at South Salem High School never interfere with The Clypian.
“They’ve never limited anything I’ve written,” he said. “I’ve covered gun violence locally as well as on a national scale. I’ve covered cellphone bans. I’ve covered a lot of controversial things, and they’ve stayed out of it because they know we take our roles as journalists very seriously.”
The respect flows both ways, he added.
“We know as editors and reporters where our line is, and we don’t flirt with that or cross it,” he said. “So they give us a lot of control, and we appreciate that.”
‘The student voice is incredibly important’
Eloise Blaine, The Headlight’s managing editor, became interested in journalism after taking an introduction to communications class taught by the paper’s current adviser, Haven Kaplan-Miner.
“I had no idea what it was about,” Blaine said. “I was able to publish two pieces my freshman year, and I really enjoyed writing. I’ve made friends with all of these people. It’s such a great community here.”
She, too, is interested in reporting social issues.
“It was important to me to provide a space where issues can be reflected on,” she said.
Stewart started at The Clypian right after the pandemic when there were only five writers on staff. Now there are 40.
“Because there were so few writers on staff, I had a chance to work with my adviser, and I was able to develop my skills quickly,” Stewart said. “I really developed a passion for journalism. I feel strongly that this is what I was meant to do.”
Stewart said it’s particularly important to him to stand up against censorship.
“I really believe the student voice is incredibly important,” he said. “Students and younger people’s opinions are often not taken too seriously. I hate that. Everyone should have an equal voice. Just because you’re younger doesn’t mean you should be disregarded.”
The Clypian often devotes entire editions to issues affecting students such as Gov. Tina Kotek’s July 2 executive order banning students from using cellphones during the school day.
Kotek issued the order after the Legislature failed to pass House Bill 2251 during this year’s legislative session.
“I really do deep dives on particular issues like that as often as I can,” Stewart said. “That’s the best journalism, when you do a deep dive and really analyze a certain topic and break it down and put it into perspective.”
‘You’re sharing human experience’
Devlin was the editor of the Patton Pages at Ida B. Wells High School last year before being promoted to editor in chief.
She said she likes to report on even the most complex social issues from a human perspective, often starting by focusing on one person’s experience.
“I think the human-interest stories are at the core of what journalism is,” Devlin said. “You’re storytelling. You’re sharing the stories that maybe people can’t tell themselves. You’re sharing human experience for all people and how we’re all connected.”
Devlin attended a journalism conference in Washington D.C., between her sophomore and junior years.
“At that point, I still didn’t know quite what I wanted to do,” she said. “After that conference, I knew this was something I want to pursue.”
Exactly how to pursue journalism remains a question.
“My strengths are in writing, and I definitely gravitate more toward print and writing than broadcasting, but I also understand that broadcasting can be more accessible in our day and age,” Devlin said. “It’s also very valuable to have many different skills.”
Pursuing journalism in the 21st century is definitely challenging, but Stewart said it’s also addictive.
“Once you do it, you can’t really stop,” Stewart said. “You have to keep improving and improving and covering cooler and cooler stories. You always have an itch to scratch. There’s always something else to cover.”
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This article appears in December 10, 2025.