As a journalist for The Highland Fling during my freshman year, I had never met any of my teachers or fellow club members face-to-face. We met exclusively on Zoom and posted our articles on The Fling’s website for a nearly nonexistent audience.
When we returned to in-person school, The Fling still didn’t have the funds or staff to create a complete, printed publication. The first printed newspaper since the pandemic, the May 2022 issue, was formatted on Google Slides. Yes. Google Slides. That was an interesting experience.
In the 2022-2023 school year, Mr. Gold became our club advisor when Mr. Roche stepped down from the position. At the time, we had no audience, no reliable source of money to print the papers, and no student leaders left from the pre-pandemic Fling. We were starting nearly from scratch, with only newspaper archives to draw inspiration from.
Though extremely busy with his responsibilities as a teacher and advisor for Model UN, Mock Trial, and Global Citizenship, Mr. Gold and Ms. Soler still made time to help build the newspaper back up. We reinvented the paper with a new logo, website, and leadership team. We refocused our articles to address the immediate events of the school and the local community.
Mr. Gold also brought with him the resources students to elevate their research endeavors, interviews, investigations, and writing. He brought in Charlie Kratovil, the founder of New Brunswick Today, as a guest speaker to teach the club about the building blocks of journalism. Mr. Gold granted the editing team access to Adobe InDesign so we could create layouts that did our journalists and their work justice.
Most importantly, Mr. Gold encouraged me and Christine to step up in our initiative and organization as the students behind The Fling. He saw our potential and fostered it instead of tolerating mistakes we hadn’t yet learned to fix.
Ultimately, Mr. Gold has given The Fling a second life. None of this year’s issues would have been possible without his consistent dedication to his vision for the paper and contagious passion for making it happen. His belief in us as an editorial and journalistic team allowed us to believe in ourselves.
Mr. Gold, thank you for creating an unforgettable year and a core foundation for those to come. We owe you one.
Kai Stevens
Managing Editor
Class of 2024