We pushed our luck pretty hard when I was a writer for my high school paper, The Drumbeats, but I heard that today the paper was actually shut down. An administrator didn't like some of the recent content and decided to put an end to it. It was announced this morning and by noon almost all of the students had signed a petition protesting the decision. I hope this is reversed and reversed quickly. How can you send kids to a civics class, teach them about freedom and the first ammendment, and then send them to newspaper class and tell them that they can't publish a paper because they might offend some people? What are we trying to teach our kids here? I'd like to offer my services to the students. If you want to set up an underground school paper on the web (like this) then I can help. If you're interested, email me: personman2 at gmail dot com.

Update: Matt, AHS journalism teacher and Brendoman.com blogger, has his reaction to his paper being shut down here

Also, I was going to post this in the comments, but I'll put it here because I can:

I think an underground paper is a good idea even if the school paper starts up again. It gives the kids a place to run stories that would be censored. I think it would also teach the kids a valuable lesson, one that needs to be learned by everyone in journalism (so listen up, Cole). Media can be more fair and honest when it's not controlled or supported by those in power. That goes for school papers under the thumb of a school district, and major papers and tv networks owned by huge corporations. Journalist are supposed to be on the front lines of protecting our freedom, so they must be free to tell the truth, even if (no, especially if) the truth reflects poorly on those in power. [end of rant]