Join

The Union St. Journal is always looking for more people to write, take pictures, conduct interviews, and assist with design. All Cherry Creek High School students are eligible to join without any kind of application or prerequisite. If you’re not a Creek student, but want to help out, we love donations!

Why join The Union St. Journal?

As any member of the USJ will tell you, doing journalism as a high school student will bring you endless benefit. Student journalists gain profound experience and skill in areas such as writing, visual arts, leadership, and interviewing, all of which will serve you immediately, with things such as the college application process and job interviews, and in the long term, in leadership positions at work. You’ll also learn how to be self-directed, while also working alongside other students in a team. Students who join the USJ during any of their four years as a Creek student are able to make friendships that they will keep for a long time. And, perhaps most immediately important, student journalists are more in the loop with what’s happening at school than anyone else.

Here’s a bit of information about our programs.

CP Journalism – main class

The majority of our members are taking the journalism class available to all Creek students in all grades. It is a year long class, meets eighth period, and is taught by English teacher Seth Fine. Students in this class work on articles throughout the year and assist with the quarterly magazine. Because there are grades in this class, there are also some requirements for how much work students in the class are required to do. These fluctuate, but usually include requirements for articles, photos, social media posts, and other essential pieces of journalism. The majority of students in our CP Journalism class return for another year of journalism.

To join the CP Journalism class, you’ll need to preregister for it during third quarter when you preregister for your other classes. There is only one period of it every year, and we always meet during 8th period, so make sure you don’t have any other conflicting classes! There are no prerequisites for this class and it is open to all students and all grades.

Journalism Club

People interested in joining the Journal who didn’t preregister for the class in time also have the opportunity to join our club. Many of our class members and most of our editors stay after school a lot to work on journalism, but our official club meeting day is Thursdays after school. The club is open to everyone at Creek and there are absolutely no requirements to join. We do encourage club members to attend every week if they’re able.

Look for us at the club fair, listen to the announcements, and follow us on social media (@creekusj) for more information. This is a very informal club so things may change from the original plan.

Join our Remind for more information: text @usjclub to 81010.

Guest and Contributing Writers

We are open to opinion and A&E articles from students who are not members of the class or club. These may be published in the magazine or on the website. Please contact us at [email protected] to write something for the Journal. Only current students at Creek can guest write for the Journal.

Guest writers are listed as contributing writers on the website after they have published three articles.

CP Journalism Leadership Workshop

This class runs in tandem with our regular CP Journalism class. It is also during eighth period, taught by the same teacher, but this class consists only of our editors and select returning members. As the name suggests, this class focuses on leading the rest of the group, often taking on a teaching role. Our students in this class are expected to complete more work than the rest of the class. The class is currently only a semester, but the students in it are expected to take two semesters. In order to take this class, you must have already completed one year of regular CP Journalism and/or have a prerequisite signature from Mr. Fine, our advisor. In the coming years, we will be trying to move this class to the Honors track, which means it will count as a weighted grade.