A tribute to a storied journalist

This article has nothing to do with USC sports. For my last column of the year, I will be going on a completely personal tangent. But if you enjoyed any of the other articles I’ve written in my Daily Trojan career, then bear with me for just a bit.

When I look back on my journalism career thus far, there is one question I still struggle to answer: why did my friends and I care so much about our high school newspaper?

I didn’t get paid $15 every time I signed up for an article like I do now. I knew early on in my junior year that I had no intention of ever being the editor in chief of the paper. The one journalism convention we really cared about was always in November, leaving the rest of the year without anything vaguely competitive for seniors to care about.

Yet from my first week on staff as a sophomore until the day I graduated, I devoted myself to the Harvard–Westlake Chronicle.

There’s only one person who really knows why. It’s not God, but she almost is one in the high school journalism world.

I remember being vaguely intimidated by Mrs. Neumeyer before I even met her. The adviser to our middle school magazine warned that she was pretty intense, and older students said if I wanted to be on the Chronicle staff, I would have to sell my soul to her.  But I wasn’t deterred; I knew I wanted to be on staff before I even got to the school.

Sure enough, she rejected the first article I ever submitted to her — a news brief that should have been a feature.

The Harvard–Westlake Chronicle was no joke. We published a 36-page issue every month — 12 pages devoted to the news, four pages of opinion, a 12-page features section and eight pages dedicated just to sports. We published the first issue of the year during the last week of summer and we published the last issue of the year Memorial Day weekend. We also ran a website, published the alumni magazine and put out a sports magazine.

Putting out all that content took a lot of work. The Chronicle staff would meet together once a day during school like a normal class, then spend pretty much an entire weekend working on layout once a month. We would finish editing each issue on Monday nights and the paper would come out on Wednesdays. Those Monday night layout sessions would start right after school and usually last until 11 p.m., when the computer system at school automatically shut down. To this day, I still don’t know if that procedure was IT policy to save energy or was really just meant to prevent us from working on the paper until first period at 8 a.m. the next day. The alumni and sports magazine required additional after-school days to edit. The website required constant updating and even stayed current during summer break. If there was ever a performance, event or sports competition on campus, you could bet that a reporter was there to cover it with a camera.

And we were good. The expectation every year was to win something from the National Scholastic Press Association, the California Newspaper Publishers Association of and the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. At the NSPA convention my senior year, the Chronicle was named the second best paper in show, the website was named best in show and the sports magazine was named fourth best specialty publication in show.

I was very drawn to the sports section of the Chronicle. The dream job was always to be a sportscaster or sportswriter, almost as early as it was to be a professional athlete. I wanted to be on ESPN or write for Sports Illustrated one day, but I knew that just about every guy between 15 and 45 wanted to, too. If I were to ever legitimately get that chance, I would need some big breaks.

The Chronicle sports section was my big break. It was my head start, my chance to prove that I really could be a good sports journalist if given the opportunity. Not only was the athletic program at our school that we covered one of the best in Southern California, but the resources we had to cover it were unheard of for a high school.

We had $1,000 cameras at our disposal to take high-resolution photos and videos for our print and digital edition. We had eight whole pages in the paper devoted to sports, which I would guess is the size of most schools’ entire papers. We had our own student-run sports magazine, our own Sports Illustrated — something USC doesn’t even have.

But most importantly, we had the best adviser in the country.

Mrs. Neumeyer had quite the career in journalism before teaching it. She was grossly overqualified to be teaching high school journalism; my experience with the Chronicle has rivaled all that I have learned here at Annenberg.

She was a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She covered the Manson murder trials for United Press International. She wrote gripping features on some of the first patients to ever be diagnosed with HIV. She had covered state politics in California since the first time Jerry Brown was governor in the 1975. She interviewed shop owners, church leaders and other common citizens who played big parts in the cleanup effort after the Rodney King riots.

Yet in 1992, the same year as the Rodney King riots, Mrs. Neumeyer was hired by Harvard-Westlake to advise the school newspaper. Since then, she’s won more national distinctions than Michael Phelps has gold medals; she’s had several graduates enter the journalism profession, and she’s played a key role in the education experience of a hundreds of students who have ever been on her staff.

Most staffers didn’t apply to journalism school like I did. But in the private prep-school, a top position on the school newspaper was a great resume addition. In fact, the experience for many juniors on staff could aptly be described as a rat race to see who becomes EIC, and there was always some tension at our end of the year staff party, just before Mrs. Neumeyer emailed out the upcoming year’s staff list.

Yet senior year was when we cared the most about the publication, even without the major ulterior motive of resume padding.  Sure, there were a couple of people who mentally checked out to some degree after not getting the position they wanted, but by the first week of school no one cared about that drama anymore. There was a huge sense of pride in the paper and a huge sense of ownership by the senior class. We wrote almost as many stories as we delegated, we fretted over meticulous details that really nobody but us would have noticed and we stayed until 11 p.m. every Monday night layout session, often getting dinner together afterward at the nearby diner and getting home around 1 a.m.

So why did we care so much? Why did we solemnly swear to publish four 32-page issues of the sports magazine, even if it meant coming in over spring break or giving up valuable second semester senior time?  Why did we redesign entire sections on Sunday nights because they just didn’t look good enough?

I still don’t exactly know why, but Mrs. Neumeyer made us care. We all bought into the standard of excellence she set, and she stayed with us until we finished every issue. She drilled into us an amazing attention for detail — especially for Oxford commas, a cardinal sin in AP style — but she simultaneously didn’t micromanage. She let us make the decisions, and that’s what created that sense of ownership. Sure, there were plenty of mistakes, but she knew the whole point was for us to learn from them.

Most importantly though, she made us care about each other. Some of my best friends were on that staff, and we knew our finished product represented all of us. I honestly don’t think I’d be at Annenberg, and maybe not even ’SC, if it wasn’t for her, but I’m most grateful for the relationships she helped foster in school.

After 23 school years at H-W, Mrs. Neumeyer is retiring this June. On behalf of every other student that ever worked for you, wrote for you or took a picture for you, thank you.

Luke Holthouse is a sophomore majoring in policy, planning and development, and broadcast and digital journalism. His column “Holthouse Party,” ran on Wednesdays.