School Newspaper to Host the Courier Concert

Note: Kody Keckler has been a 3-year member of the Courier staff and was one of the editors this last school year.

The staff of Solon High School’s student newspaper is organizing a fundraiser to benefit the newspaper and the journalism program.

On May 29 SHS’s newspaper, the Courier, is hosting the Courier Concert at the Solon Center for the Arts from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The concert will feature both the Phunky Panda Monkeys, a band comprised of SHS alumni and current students, as well as singer/songwriter Brett Fromson, a popular music major studying at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and a 2010 graduate of SHS. General admission tickets to the event are $8.

The Courier, which won second place honors at the recent all-Ohio student state journalism convention, is an important news source for Solon students and clubs. In the past two years, the newspaper staff has made progress toward retiring its debt and operating in the black. The Courier, like all clubs in the school, needs to have a balanced budget. The staff is staging the benefit concert to help the paper close the gap in its budget and keep all possible publication options open for next year’s staff. Although the staff has discussed increasing the paper’s online presence, the student journalists value the print version of the paper.

“Like all publications, the Courier will need to assess its options and strike the right balance between digital and print while working to increase revenues and delivering the news in a cost-effective manner,” said SHS Principal Erin Short. “The Courier is a source of pride for the high school and an excellent example of student journalism. The challenges of operating a news organization in a financially challenging environment have real-world application for our student journalists, many of whom plan on pursuing careers in the media. We look forward to working with the staff to help bolster their business plan and examine a wide range of options for increasing the paper’s efficiency and readership reach.”

To purchase tickets to the Notes for News Concert event, contact Erin Calabrese, the Courier advisor, at ecalabrese@solonboe.org.