Features

The history of The Huron Emery: unwavering student journalism since 1968

Anjali Nadarajah, Print Editor-in-Chief

December 15, 2025

The Huron Emery has faced many changes throughout the years.

Yearbook coverage of The Emery in the fall of 1969 (Courtesy of The Enthymion )

The Huron Emery has been the independent, student-run newspaper for Huron since the 1968-1969 school year, when students were attending Pioneer High School (at the time known as Ann Arbor High School) in the mornings, and the newly-built Huron in the afternoon. Through the years of rotary dials to flip phones to iPhones, one thing has stayed consistent– the Emery. It has never failed to be a reliable source of information for the community of Huron and Ann Arbor.

There was even an Independent Emery–a separate publication not sponsored by the school. A copy from its October 1993 issue states in a letter to the readers, “We are completely self-supported. We gain our funds primarily through advertising, and any other means available.” This is a standard The Emery holds up to this day.

The Emery was dormant for about 10 years until being revived in the 2015-2016 school year as a club, only becoming a solidified class in the 2017-2018 school year.

As The Huron Emery reaches almost 50 years as high school student newspaper, it’s important to note the importance of unbiased, real time reporting. Through the years, both Huron High School as well as the community of Ann Arbor has relied on The Emery’s coverage.

Esper presenting at the National Scholastic Press Association conference in Boston in 2023

The Board beat

When AAPS faced massive budget cuts in 2024, The Huron Emery became a source many community members relied on for updates on the situation. Anna Esper, a current sophomore at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, was a print editor-in-chief of The Emery in 2023-2024. As her senior year started, news broke out that the school board was in a $25 million budget shortfall. This is when Esper attended her first of many school board meetings.

“I remember the day we found out that Jeanice Swift was stepping down,” she said. “We needed to write about this. That night I went to Skyline for the board meeting. I walked up to the teachers protesting and and did some interviews with people I knew [and] board members. That’s when we decided that the article would be front page of the paper.”

She went to many board meetings after that, one going well past midnight.

“I said, ‘Hey, this is going to be my thing,’” Esper said. “Every time I would write something, I would have to go back and double check it. We were the first publication to publish an article about the superintendent situation and what was going on with AAPS as a whole.”

The stress of ensuring factual information nerved her at first. She felt that as a high school publication, it was a lot of pressure to publish such pressing coverage. But as a group effort, the Emery wrote many articles in a series called School Board Updates. By attending regular school board meetings, Esper sacrificed her Wednesday night plans with friends and senior year activities. But she doesn’t regret it one bit.

“It’s very impactful because you get to learn about your community and what your teachers go through,” she said. “It’s actually not that difficult to go and dedicate your time, because you’re always going to learn something new there. I always felt like I was in the know, and connected to my community.”

Esper presenting at the National Scholastic Press Association conference in Boston in 2023 (Courtesy of Esper)

Kodali and current print editor-in-chief Satvika Ramanathan pose with Volume 8 Issue 2

Emotional reporting

Ridhima Kodali, editor-in-chief of the Emery in 2022-2023, currently attends Northwestern University as a journalism major. She too, took a lot from her role as a high school journalist.

“I think being part of The Emery has played such a huge role in the reporter I am today,” she said. “With OC being our adviser, she really did a great job in training us with journalistic skills and how to approach certain situations. And still today, I think about if I hadn’t done the Emery, I don’t think I’d be where I am today.”

When Kodali was a senior, Huron received social media threats about school shootings, following the recent Oxford High School shooting. She knew, amidst the chaos and fear, that it needed to be reported.

“When you write something about school administration, you want to maintain good relationships with them, but they also want you to write things that advance the message they want to send,” she said. “In my [story] I was able to get student perspectives as well, it was a deep dive of everything going on.”

She also reported on the Oxford High School shooting itself, interviewing a teacher that lived close to the school.

“She instantly broke down crying,” Kodali said. “After something like that happens as a parent of two kids, you’re scared. I felt like the story I wrote was very impactful. It affected me a lot as a journalist– I had a moment where I [remembered] what we do matters.”

Reflecting on her journey at The Emery, she hopes people at Huron realize how much goes into reporting.

“It is a really tough job being a high school journalist,” she said. “I feel like people didn’t realize how difficult it was. The stories we were writing, designing the issue in Adobe Indesign, there’s a lot that goes into it.”

Kodali and current print editor-in-chief Satvika Ramanathan pose with Volume 8 Issue 2 (Courtesy of Kodali)

Heng designing the center spread with fellow student journalists

Community contact

Current Stanford Law student Julie Heng was editor-in-chief of the Emery in 2020, later writing for the Harvard Crimson while getting her undergraduate degree in evolutionary biology and philosophy. Heng even started Clague Middle School’s paper, The Cougar Star. From interviewing students in Huron’s auto shop, to immigration rights, she’s always been an eager student journalist.

“I learned so much through doing it, and I was always excited to help share these stories,” she said. “I think it really helped me grow as a person who likes to ask questions. I’ve always brought a lot of that journalism spirit with me throughout.”

Heng believes student journalism provides coverage to the community that is often lacking due to media consolidation– the idea that a few large corporations own an increasing share of media outlets, leading to fewer independent voices and diverse viewpoints.

“When you look at how news stories are portioned, oftentimes, you have very few local sources of journalism for any given city,” she said. “Students being able to step up to do that is a really exciting chance. People look down on what students can do, but a lot of really great stories have been broken by student journalists.”

She believes student journalism plays a crucial role in civic life by participating in “the schoolhouse of democracy;” the idea that schools are foundational for learning and participating in a democracy.

“I think student journalism is one of the best examples of being at the frontier,” Heng said. “It really can train and expose us when we’re young, that there are problems in the world and we can do something about it. I think it’s just as valuable as writing to their representatives, it’s like a key component in there.”

During her time at The Emery, she remembers writing a particularly impactful article about a student whose undocumented father was deported. After multiple interviews with the source, local law enforcement, and even professors of immigration at the University of Michigan, and figuring out how to report in a sensitive way, Volume 5 Issue 2 included a cohesive front page story and spread centered around immigration. As one of the main reporters of this issue, as well as The Emery as a whole, Heng recalls her experience as “thrilling.”

“It was so exciting to be able to talk to [Olympic] figure skaters who had graduated from our school, or talk to people behind some of the biggest Supreme Court cases who also happen to live in Ann Arbor,” she said. “These sorts of things were just tremendously exciting to me. Feeling like I could help cover that [activism] was very illuminating.”

Heng hopes for The Emery to continue evolving through new media and creative forms, remaining exciting through the ebbs and flows of life.

“I think it’s always been a platform to feature and highlight different people– our teams, our clubs, our students, our teachers, our staff– and that can take so many different forms, but the most unexpected ones were and the best ones,” she said. “It really is what each person wants to bring out of it. I think we keep surprising ourselves, and that’s the most exciting thing.”

Heng designing the center spread with fellow student journalists (Courtesy of Heng)

In 2025, The Huron Emery continues to demonstrate the importance of student journalism. From reporting on school board budget cuts, to school safety threats, to deportation, we continue to uphold the responsibility of accurate reporting for our students and community. We are still student-run. We are still a platform for student voices. Most importantly, we are still asking questions and documenting moments that matter.

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