I was beyond delighted to learn that the Times News is giving 11 students from six Carbon County schools an opportunity to notify the public of events and other happenings at their respective schools.

This is a tremendous way for these students to sample what it is like to be published in a respected community newspaper. Congratulations to all of the selected students, and I have been enjoying their weekly reports that began on Dec. 16. After a break for the holidays, they returned last week and will continue to appear each Friday.

Sue Ann Gerhard, an administrative assistant at the Carbon Career & Technical Institute, is coordinating the project. I want to thank her for taking on this task, which requires riding herd on the contributors to make sure they fulfill their assignments and meet their deadlines.

Of course, few of these students aspire to become journalists, but at least one does: Gabriella Di Dea, a senior at Lehighton Area High School, plans to major in journalism and communications.

Two others - River Knoblauch and Kyle Lin - are both Panther Valley Junior-Senior High School seniors who hold editorial positions at their school newspaper, the Paw Prints.

Having lived or died by deadlines my entire professional journalistic career and even now some 25 years into retirement, I can tell you this is not for the faint of heart. There is a hole on the newspaper or electronic page to be filled, and if you are the one assigned to fill it, you had better come through, because nothing upsets the apple cart like missed deadlines.

As an editor, I know what it was like as deadline approached and a reporter was begging for five or 10 more minutes to plug holes into a breaking news story. I recall several times when we could no longer wait. I had to order the reporter to file the story. If there were holes to be filled, fill them online and in a follow-up hard-copy story, I would tell the reporter.

Not meeting a deadline gums up the works for the entire newspaper production procedure. If the press is late starting, it results in a cascade of problems. The carriers will not get their papers on time to deliver them, thus upsetting customers. Depending on how late this is might mean delivering most of a carrier’s papers in the dark, especially during this time of year.

These young contributors will not be under such intense deadline pressure, because the paper will be counting on Gerhard, the project coordinator, to get the finished column to the paper on time, but the students will have to meet their prescribed deadlines nonetheless. Learning the simple rule of not missing deadlines is one of the most important and basic in journalism as well as in other fields.

Most of the columns will include information about noncontroversial subject matter - that is not the mission of this project. It is a vehicle to allow these students to communicate to the public about what is going on in their respective high schools.

I was always around newspapers even before I became a professional journalist. I was editor of the Junior High Chat at the Philip Ginder Junior High School in Summit Hill when I was in eighth grade. The late and prescient Ruth Kotzmoyer, my English teacher, appointed me to this position, saying that she saw a potential journalist in me.

Even before this, when I was about 10 years old, I produced a two-page neighborhood newsletter crammed with information about things going on in the neighborhood, including my opinion about some of these matters. I sold the publication for three cents apiece and distributed the finished product to about 130 households near my home on East Hazard Street in Summit Hill.

In high school, I would feed sports scores and brief write-ups about Summit Hill sports teams to The Evening Record in Lansford and The Morning Call in Allentown. I also was co-editor of our high school yearbook, the Hilltopper

By fifth grade, I knew that I wanted to have a career in communications or education when I grew up. I was incredibly lucky to have had both.

The point of recounting these personal experiences is intended to be an example to these 11 students that what they do as part of this project might be the spark that leads to the start of a career in communications or an allied field.

By Bruce Frassinelli?|?tneditor@tnonline.com