High school ends its school newspaper after it published LGBTQ articles

The final issue of the Viking Saga
Photo: Screenshot

A Nebraska high school has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

School administrators eliminated both the high school newspaper and its journalism program following publication of the school’s year-end issue in May, which featured a story on the history of LGBTQ rights and editorials on LGBTQ topics.

Three days after distribution of Northwest High School’s Viking Saga, staff and students were notified of the paper and program’s elimination. Shortly after, the newspaper’s printing service and advertising contracts with the nearby Grand Island Independent were cancelled.

“The very last issue that came out this year, there was… a little bit of hostility amongst some,” Northwest Public Schools board Vice President Zach Mader said. “There were editorials that were essentially, I guess what I would say, LGBTQ.”

“There have been talks of doing away with our newspaper if we were not going to be able to control content that we saw [as] inappropriate,” Mader told the Independent.

“There [were] some things that were…” he said, referring to the final issue of the Viking Saga. “If [taxpayers] read that [issue], they would have been like, ‘Holy cow. What is going on at our school?’”

Board President San Leiser claimed that “most people were upset they were written,” referring to the articles about LGBTQ rights.

In addition to the controversy surrounding content, according to students, Saga staff was reprimanded in April after…

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