Eppler Junior High School has recently started an online newspaper. It’s an afterschool club that meets every other Monday. With help from supervising teacher Nichole Forand and seniors Haley Grooms, Parker Hopkins and Abby Jenkins, the club is currently working on feature stories.

“My favorite thing about the Eppler Echo is that I get to help teach kids about journalism and get them interested,” Hopkins said. “I hope to get these students interested enough in journalism to join the Arrow when they get into Utica.”

Although the website, epplerecho.org, currently has no posts, new stories are on the way.

“The first story will hopefully be published soon,” Grooms said. “ We’re currently working on feature stories, and a few of them have really good ideas.”

A start in journalism may be something that helps in years to come. Whether you take it as a class in college or just as something to fill up your free time. According to an article on www.monster.com, written by Lily Martis, a few of the top jobs for journalism graduates are content marketers, public relation specialists, social media specialists, editor, reporter, and a few more.

“With this club, my hope is to inspire an appreciation and interest in school-based journalism,” Forand said, “and being on the Warrior yearbook staff at Utica for 3 years and being Editor-in-Chief my senior year really gave me the confidence to do well in many different aspects of my life. Being on a publications staff teaches about deadlines, time management, collaboration, professionalism, and working under pressure. I want to give students at Eppler the chance to discover a love for publications while they are still in middle school so that they can thrive on a high school publications staff in the future. It has been a whirlwind starting this club, but because the staff members that I do have are extremely dedicated it has been worth it.”