It’s hard not to reminisce on all of the wonderful stories we reported on and the numerous detailed photographs taken in 2024. As The Tam News takes on 2025, we are looking to the future, which—with 21 out of 27 students in our class being seniors—remains unresolved. But we have faith in our audience and the Tamalpais High School community, and now we are calling upon you to step up and take action. The Tam News needs your passion for reporting, your impressive writing skills, and your attention. At The Tam News, we pride ourselves in our dazzling legacy and commitment to honest and timely reporting. Sometimes, it seems that we have strayed from the former glory of our magazine, and 2025 is our year to rebuild.
The Tam News accomplished many exciting things in 2024 that we haven’t done in recent years.
First, we received a grant from the Tam High Foundation to purchase more iPads, which allowed our photo and graphics editors to produce exceptional media more efficiently each month.
Second, our program won two awards: silver in Columbia Scholastic Media’s High School Print General Magazine category, and First Class in the National Scholastic Press Association’s 2023-2024 website critique. In addition, current Editor-in-Chief Emerson Swift won first place in the California Press Women’s 2024 feature contest for her article “Humans,” which was published on the cover of the December 2023 issue of The Tam News.
Third, the advanced journalism class welcomed three guest speakers: Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş, a publisher at FastForward Magazine; Dylan Swift, Director of National Marketing at Yelp; and a representative from the Student Press Law Center, an organization dedicated to protecting the First Amendment rights of student journalists. From these speakers, we learned about descriptive language, writing the perfect email, and journalism ethics.
Fourth, The Tam News took a field trip to San Francisco to visit the KQED headquarters and the KNBR recording studio. At KQED, we learned about the history of the news organization, witnessed podcasters and radio hosts give live updates, and spoke to journalist Daisy Nguyen. While touring KNBR, we met radio host Brian Murphy and learned about his journey from The Daily Bruin to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Finally, in December, The Tam News editors-in-chief and managing editor visited Redwood High School to observe their paper, the Redwood Bark. They wondered how their program had flourished over the years, despite severe budget cuts and other threats to its stability. The Redwood Bark functions with three classes of Advanced Journalism and an advisor who has been overseeing the paper for 12 years, while The Tam News has one class, and is welcoming its third advisor in six years.
However, the point of the visit was not to compare and contrast the two programs. The objective was to understand and possibly adopt certain practices that the Redwood Bark uses to manage its production and engage the Redwood community. With that in mind, The Tam News would like to reflect on 2024 and set goals for 2025—to continue connecting with our school and informing our community in our own way.
The Tam News is beyond proud of everything we achieved and learned in 2024, which is why we can’t wait to hit the ground running in 2025.
So far this year, The Tam News has heard from professional journalist John Branch of The New York Times who visited in mid-January. He is a reporter best known for his long-form features, especially “What Ever Happened to the Lady Jaguars?” which was published in November, and “Snow Fall,” an article that won a 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing.
For the remaining half of this school year, the advanced journalism class has been restructured to dedicate all in-school time to preparing the next issue, as opposed to completing unrelated assignments. Every The Tam News reporter and editor will have the opportunity to contribute to the composition of the newest issue in class. We believe this helps our students feel more deeply connected to and involved in the production of the paper.
As we strengthen our in-class community, we hope to do the same for our peers and supporters. The Tam News’ overarching goal for 2025 is to create more opportunities for our surrounding communities to interact with our magazine.
The first way we plan to make this happen is through being more active on our social media accounts. Thanks to our social media editors, this goal is increasingly achievable. On our Instagram—@thetamnews—we post current stories, updates, and photos from various Tam events. This is a great way for our audience to stay informed. We have also just created a TikTok account—@the.tam.news—which shows the Tam community what it’s like to be in the Advanced Journalism class, and offers an inside look at all of the fun opportunities that come with being a part of The Tam News. Along with these accounts, we vow to keep our website—thetamnews.org—up-to-date, with our most recent articles being published online before our issues come out in print. Our website is the easiest view into our past work, our current staff, and our accolades.
Our second goal to improve community outreach is by distributing our magazine to nearby establishments. This will ensure a wider audience than our peers, promoting The Tam News for adults, business owners, and the elderly. A few of the places where we plan to have copies of our issues are The Redwoods Senior Living, the Depot, and Mill Valley Market.
The Tam News’ third goal for 2025 is to offer more multimedia-style journalism. This includes more photographs, illustrations, and interactive aspects of our magazine; such as crossword puzzles and character quizzes. This will make our issues more visually appealing and allow the reader to get involved.
Our last goal is to be more diligent sports reporters, specifically broadcasters. At Tam, athletes make up a large part of the student body, and incorporating our Tam Broadcasting Network (TBN) platform into our website and issues is a great way for The Tam News to draw the attention of athletes, parents of athletes, and curious viewers.
The Tam News has made an impact on our reporters as well. University of Michigan freshman Asa Moore was an opinion editor in spring 2024.
“I think part of what made my experience with The Tam News so great was that I met some of my closest friends from high school in the class, and it definitely helped my writing ability as well,” Moore said. “I also felt like I was part of something a lot bigger than myself, and being able to see the magazine win an award before I graduated really made all of my hard work worth it.”
Thank you so much for supporting The Tam News this past year. We hope you’ll stay to witness the incredible things we’ll accomplish in 2025.
