At The Orange, White Plains High School students squeeze 'All The Juice That's Fit to Print'

At White Plains High School, the student journalists at The Orange know how to squeeze every drop from a story -- with a playful wink to The New York Times.

The outlet carries the playful motto “All The Juice That’s Fit to Print” -- a nod to The Gray Lady’s famous 1897 slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” – though it has not yet made the jump to the redesigned website.

“It’s on the paper edition,” The Orange Editor-in-Chief Cristina Damato said last week at the Media Center. “When we designed the new website, it didn’t get transferred over, but that’s still our motto.”

Cristina, a junior, joined The Orange as a freshman staff writer. She later became associate editor and, this year, rose to the top of the masthead after discussions between outgoing editors and faculty advisers, English teachers Gia LoScalzo and Marlena Simmons.

“I really like helping to make the public aware of things,” Cristina said. “Even if not a lot of people read it, I like making sure the website includes everything — world news and school news.”

The Orange is one of three publications at the school, alongside the yearbook The Oracle and the literary magazine The Roar. While those celebrate memories and creative work, The Orange focuses squarely on reporting: school events, national and world news, sports, features and opinion.

Cristina runs weekly meetings in Ms. LoScalzo’s classroom, arriving with a prepared PowerPoint and a writing tip of the week. Topics range from active vs. passive voice to attribution and interviewing techniques. Recently, she emphasized building strong first paragraphs, or “ledes,” by answering the five W’s — who, what, where, when and why.

Her deputy is senior William McDermott, officially the copy editor but deeply involved in every aspect of production. He writes, edits, assigns stories and handles layout for the print edition alongside Ms. Simmons. He and Cristina are also physics lab partners, often editing between experiments.
“It’s great working with Cristina,” William said. “We work really well together.”

Typically, Cristina gives articles the first edit; William provides a second read. Then the advisers take a final look before publication.

“We definitely run the paper,” Cristina said, proudly. “They give us advice but it’s definitely student-led.”

Ms. LoScalzo agreed.

“This particular pairing, they’re very independent,” she said. “Cristina comes with her PowerPoint all prepared. They’re doing great jobs.”

When Cristina was a freshman, The Orange operated on a simple Wix blog. A grant allowed the staff to move to SNO Sites, a journalism-specific platform where students upload drafts, editors manage content and advisers proofread before publication.

“It’s really very user-friendly for us,” Ms. LoScalzo said. “We’re very happy.”

The site updates every two to three days, once a batch of stories is ready. Cristina checks it daily. There are three print editions this year, and William oversees pagination and design.

“I’ll edit the articles, and then I’m responsible for putting together the paper edition with Ms. Simmons,” he said. “I format everything, figure out what goes in, what doesn’t need to go in.”

Length matters and news stories are generally kept around 500 words for print space, while features and opinion pieces can stretch closer to 800.

“We want to cover world news,” Cristina said. “But we’re not covering exclusively world news. I also want to hit an article for every big thing that happens in school.”

Cristina regularly reads The Times for ideas and background, then consults other major outlets such as CNN and USA Today to round out coverage. William said reliability is paramount.

“I probably get a lot of my initial news from social media,” he said. “But I won’t really believe it until I see it from CNN or The New York Times. You want reliable information.”

Freedom of the press is essential — even at the high school level, according to William, who perused vintage editions of The Orange, one from as far back as 1929.

“The people deserve the truth,” he said. “They deserve to know what’s going on in the country and the world, and it’s our responsibility as journalists to give them that.”

That responsibility extends to covering events from a student perspective, including a recent anti-ICE walkout at the school.

“It’s important that we tell these stories from our point of view,” he said.

About 12 students regularly attend meetings, though roughly 20 contribute writing overall. Many are underclassmen, not all of whom are enrolled in the school’s Journalism elective, which covers such areas as newsworthiness, Associated Press style, ethics and media literacy.  

Because The Orange is a club rather than a graded class, deadlines can be challenging.

“It’s hard sometimes to get those articles,” Ms. LoScalzo said. “If there’s something that absolutely has to go out and it’s timely, usually one of our editors or copy editors will do it.”

Even so, this year’s staff has been prolific.

“We have a really nice crew right now,” she said. “They’re writing a lot and handing in their stuff on time.”

Ms. Simmons, who has advised the paper for about a decade and once wrote for The Orange as a student herself, sees long-term value in the experience.

“It’s really good for their college applications,” she said.

William, who hopes to become a baseball broadcaster, got his start writing about the 2023 World Series. One of his favorite pieces covered Juan Soto’s return to the Bronx in May 2025 after joining the Mets.

“That was a fun one to write,” he said. “I don’t really have a horse in the race, so I looked at it from a bipartisan standpoint.”

Cristina, who tends to gravitate toward breaking news, recently secured an interview with astronaut Chris Williams, whose father had worked alongside her own at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

For her, leadership is about mentorship as much as headlines.

“As editor-in-chief, I like to give back to the freshmen what my editors-in-chief gave to me,” she said. “They helped me be brave enough to raise my hand and volunteer for an article. They helped me learn how to write.”

William sees the publication as both a training ground and a civic responsibility, especially when documenting events from a student perspective. As he prepares to graduate, he takes comfort in what comes next.

“It’s great to know that I’m going to be leaving it in good hands,” he said.