{"id":22750,"date":"2025-04-10T23:20:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T05:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/swos-student-newspaper-seeks-donations-to-fund-print-edition\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:16:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:16:49","slug":"swos-student-newspaper-seeks-donations-to-fund-print-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/swos-student-newspaper-seeks-donations-to-fund-print-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"SWOS student newspaper seeks donations to fund print edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Southwest
Southwest Open School\u2019s student journalists. From left to right: Dante Crawford, Luca Blair, Dominik Horton, Josalynn Archuleta, Rae Cargill, Kescoleigh Boeckman, Kalista Summes, Leo Griffin. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Eight students at Southwest Open School in Cortez who serve on student government have dabbled in journalism since February.<\/p>\n

So far, they\u2019ve printed two, eight-page editions of The Bottom Line<\/em>, thanks to \u201cthe glue that holds this paper together,\u201d said Editor-in-Chief Christopher Kelley, who has \u201calmost lost his mind twice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelley has paid a pretty penny \u2013 nearly $200 \u2013 to print the 50 copies of the newspaper for students to enjoy, and, as he put it, \u201ccan\u2019t keep that up\u201d every month.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the fundraising comes in\u2013 online, people can donate to support student journalism at SWOS and its print edition at https:\/\/givebutter.com\/3cteyT<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSWOS has never had a paper before,\u201d said Kescoleigh Boeckman, a student journalist who\u2019s contributed both the headline stories so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a small school, and this gives us an opportunity to get into a new kind of thing,\u201d said Boeckman.<\/p>\n

Students called the experience \u201cinspiring\u201d and reported having enjoyed the challenge of writing something that wasn\u2019t quite an essay, and not persuasive writing, either.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve enjoyed it so much, in fact, that they\u2019re hoping to establish a journalism class next year\u2013 a feat that requires sorting out credits, said Kelley.<\/p>\n

Establishing a class would make it so students outside of student government could more easily contribute to the paper. It\u2019d also give students time to work on their stories in school\u2013 as it stands, the eight student journalists write their stories outside of classroom hours, on their own time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spend five to six hours doing an album review,\u201d said Dominik Horton. \u201cI listen to the album at least eight times.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, Horton does a deep dive, reading reviews, Reddit, searching for shared meanings of songs. Eventually, \u201cI\u2019ll come up with my own meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Student journalist Rae Cargill said, \u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot more about how people judge movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

To piece together the paper each month, everyone has sort of adopted a role, though that role can change.<\/p>\n

Josalynn Archuleta is the quote finder, who reportedly spends a great deal of time finding the right one since there are so many quotes to choose from.<\/p>\n

Archuleta eventually settled on one from former President Ronald Reagan for the latest edition: \u201cWe can\u2019t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kalista Summers shares fun facts, like how the average cloud weighs over 1 million pounds, and \u201cAbraham Lincoln loved cats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leo Griffin hones horoscopes, Dante Crawford conducts student interviews, and Luca Blair focuses on fashion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve gotten a lot of feedback on it,\u201d Cargill said, of the paper. \u201cPeople either love it or they hate it. There\u2019s no in-between.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some negative feedback they received concerned the print version\u2013 students complained that it was \u201cmessy.\u201d The student journalists said that \u201cthey don\u2019t realize it\u2019s homemade. It\u2019s a newspaper, SWOS edition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cool to see students walking around campus with a print paper in their hands,\u201d said Kelley.<\/p>\n

Another point of contention was the \u201csexy purple dragon\u201d they put on the upper right corner of the front page and across the entire back page, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what you call a page filler,\u201d Kelley laughed.<\/p>\n

Kelley said they prompted AI to create an image of a \u201csexy purple dragon\u201d \u2013 a play on SWOS\u2019s mascot \u2013 and they voted to choose the one pasted on the paper.<\/p>\n

Those interested in supporting the student newspaper can reach out to Christopher Kelley via email at ckelley@cortez.k12.co.us<\/a>, or donate online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cThat\u2019s
\u201cThat\u2019s what you call a page filler,\u201d Christopher Kelley joked, referencing the AI-generated \u201csexy purple dragon\u201d across the entire back page of the student newspaper. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a platform for people to donate online <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,29,2467],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-swos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77836,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22750\/revisions\/77836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22750"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}