Searchby Ellen Creane
A law firm whose clients are school districts has become the first Kid Scoop sponsor appearing in a start-up weekly, the Oshkosh Herald in Wisconsin. The paper published its first edition in January 2018, and introduced the Kid Scoop feature in June 2019.
Why did publisher-owner Karen Schneider found this new weekly?
“I have worked in newspapers for 30 years and watched the steep decline of local news coverage,” she said. With literacy rates and news readership declining, Schneider was startled to learn that prison population forecasts were based on fourth-grade reading scores.
She discovered reports that 46 per cent of Oshkosh fourth graders were scoring below grade level in reading. After her position as general manager/ad director for two dailies was eliminated by Gannett mergers, Schneider decided to found the Oshkosh Herald to focus on local news and literacy.
Some 500 students used Kid Scoop in the Herald during the 2019 summer reading program at libraries, summer school classrooms, and Boys and Girls clubs. Deliveries were funded by a local Altrusa International organization.
The paper makes both print and e-editions of the Herald available to teachers with support from the local law firm. The goal for Year One is to have 10 per cent of the school district’s 10,000 Oshkosh students reading the Herald and using the Kid Scoop literacy feature in classrooms. One principal related his delight to Schneider.
“I was just walking the halls and popped into one of our 5th-grade classrooms. They were all feverishly going through the Herald newspaper. When they saw that I was in the room, they started telling me about all the ways our school was mentioned in the paper. It was very cool, to say the least,” Brad Dunn, Head Administrator of Valley Christian School said.
The Kid Scoop color page is designed with puzzles, word searches, writing contests, plus reading, math and geography activities that lead young readers to explore other parts of the newspaper. Each weekly topic aligns with required skills and subjects for learning and behavior, such as the “Giving and Receiving” feature on a December page.
The online resources, provided at no charge as part of the Herald’s Kid Scoop subscription, include lesson plans for teachers and parent materials for use at home. The Herald delivers 31,000 print copies every Wednesday with more than 29,000 direct-mailed to mailboxes in its circulation area via the U.S Postal Service.
“I’m getting great feedback from the community!” Schneider says. “I ran into a parent in the grocery store who told me that his 7-year-old grabs the Herald for the Kid Scoop page as soon as the paper arrives at home.
