Temple News publishes section from California students affected by wildfires in its final edition of the semester

When the Pacific Palisades wildfire blazed through Palisades Charter High School in Southern California, one of the many things destroyed was its newsroom, the home for the school’s student newspaper, Tideline.

Palisades went to fully remote instruction as the students and their community faced the devastation that left a dozen people dead and several thousand structures destroyed, making it the second-most-destructive in Los Angeles’ history, second only to the Eaton wildfire that raged at the same time.

Tideline’s staff continued writing and reporting through the disaster. They covered how the school and the community adjusted to their new reality, and created a “People of Pali” section for other students to submit essays about how the wildfire had affected them. The newspaper hasn’t had a print edition since 2022 because of the cost, so remote publishing suited them.

But this week, Tideline is back in print, thanks to a college newspaper based some 2,700 miles away. For its final print edition of the semester, Temple University’s Temple News is featuring a special 10-page pullout section written by students from the high school, and includes other work from Pasadena Rosebud Academy students, a small K-8 school in Altadena affected by the Eaton wildfire.

» READ MORE: Families in shock begin to visit their charred homes in the Los Angeles area

“It’s ultimately a really cool opportunity to help students that are going through a pretty devastating time in their lives ... any way the Temple News can help and spread the word out on the East Coast is something we’re excited to do,” said Temple News editor-in-chief Samuel O’Neal.

“It’s super exciting that Temple News wanted to publish our work,” said Casey Scaduto, an opinion editor for Tideline, over email. “I feel that all student journalists have a certain sense of understanding and mutual respect,” she said.

“It’s sick! Tideline got a chance to act professional!” Zacharie Sergenian, a graphics editor for Tideline, said in an email.

There is the obvious question — why would a Philadelphia university newspaper become the publishing home for California students? Aside from the distance, only 269 current Temple students are from California, just 0.9% of the university’s student population, according to data published by Temple.

The cross-country connection began with pioneering journalist Claire Smith, the founder and executive director of Temple’s Claire Smith Center for Sports Media. Before she began teaching at Temple, Smith was an award-winning and pioneering Black woman baseball journalist The former Inquirer columnist’s contacts in Los Angeles told her about Palisades Charter High School and their newspaper, and she brought the idea to O’Neal.

O’Neal said he could empathize with having your life suddenly interrupted and upended. He was a senior in high school during the onset of the COVID pandemic and said that while he’d never lost his home, “having to do remote learning really sucked.”

“You only get to be in high school once, and when that process is interrupted, it’s really sad,” he said.

Most of the special section comes from Tideline and functions as a condensed version of its typical newspaper. It includes news stories, like how the school’s sports teams are staying connected and in shape over Zoom while they wait to resume their seasons, and more “People of Pali” essays. The rest of the section features poems and drawings from Rosebud Academy middle schoolers.

The section gives East Coasters more insight to the devastation and how the fires affected people besides affluent, white families and Hollywood celebrities. Nearly half of Palisades Charter High School students are people of color, and a quarter are eligible for free or reduced lunch, according to U.S. News.

“It has been so surreal to see how quickly our town lost everything,” Scaduto said.

Sergenian lived about a mile away from where the fires started in Pacific Palisades. He and his family and dog have been moving between hotels, Airbnbs, and other rentals, sleeping under seven different roofs since January.

“Moving between everywhere while having to continue school during the heaviest high school year has been stressful, and I’ve found it hard to manage,” he said.

But Sergenian said working with Temple News has been an exciting reprieve, and something to feel good about.

“With the way that the news cycle works, moments like the Palisades fire are quickly forgotten in the public consciousness. There’s always more happening. When Temple reached out, it was a reminder that people cared,” he said.

The community is slowly finding ways to move forward, including its students. The school restarted in-person instruction last week, repurposing an old Sears department store for the last month and a half of the school year.

Scaduto is still living with a family friend in Santa Monica, as finals loom and her home remains severely damaged. Through these uncertain and difficult months, she said that putting together Tideline’s special edition has been a motivating force.

“We are resilient and determined to keep being journalists even when the topics we cover in our stories affect us, too,” she said.