About Us

 

The Pen is Peninsula High’s award-winning school newspaper situated at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Rolling Hills Estates, California. We publish a total of eight issues per school year, covering prevalent news surrounding the students of Peninsula.

Since its beginning in 1991 by previous adviser Pat Linehan, The Pen has won numerous awards, including the Golden Crown Awards, Gold Medalist Certificate from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and the National Scholastic Press Association’s Newspaper Pacemaker Award.  It is completely student-based and student-run, with the help of our wonderful current adviser, Mrs. Jaymee DeMeyer. The newspaper addresses local, state, national and global topics that all are tied back to student life here at Peninsula.

The Pen hopes to move forward in its goal to inform the student body and the surrounding community in an accurate manner, shedding light on uncovered news and being the medium by which Peninsula’s journalism students not only share, but interpret the facts.

We strive to establish a platform for community discussion with our newspaper, a public forum in which both individual voice and comity are maintained and revered.

We abstain from any slanderous or otherwise inappropriate libel and always maintain a traditional sense of integrity. In the case that published information does provoke controversy, we can only say that it is our duty to disseminate the truth, in the purest sense of the word, however hard to maintain. It is our sole goal to inform and to provide insight into current issues and events.

We abide by the tenets of California’s Educational Code 48907, which gives students the same rights as professional journalists that use them in an appropriate manner for journalistic purposes. We reserve the right to publish whatever material we deem that the student body deserves to be informed about.

In the 2023-2024 school year’s eight issues, we hope to uphold such standards and to continue acting as a voice for the students, a conveyor of the truth and a pen of the people.