Out With The Old In With The New! Goodbye with the Academy Times hello with the Blue Beacon.

What Does The Blue Beacon Mean? Why Did We Name Our Paper The Blue Beacon? Read on!

We've decided to name our paper The Blue Beacon for many reasons. First, we wanted a new identity. It has been many years since there was a hard copy of the school paper, and we wanted to begin with a fresh start. A fresh name gives us that fresh start. Second, our school color is blue. Promoting school spirit will be an important priority at our paper, so blue it is! Finally, we chose beacon because a beacon is a guiding light. That's what we hope to be. Also, we felt beacon was an appropriate name for a school that is by the coast.

Overall, we think the name Blue Beacon really fits our school and our paper, and we hope you will too.

Last year and years before the newspaper was an online paper that was maybe not as accessed as we would like. Maybe it was because the paper was on-line. Whatever the reason, we are attempting to increase our readership. We will distribute 1,000 copies of our first edition! We have also created a new and improved format to accompany our new name. We have dramatically increased our staff. Last year we began with only five people and ended the year wnn only two sixth gravers everything. This year we actually have eighteen staff from all grade levels. We hope that everyone's voice will be represented.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I'd like to thank a bunch of people. Thanks to Mr. Muscara for giving us the much needed support from the top to get our newspaper up and running. We wouldn't be here without his support. Thanks to Mr. Doherty for being our advisor this year. Thanks to Mrs. Brophy for being our previous advisor, and also for offering her technical support. She has always been there to answer our questions late into the afternoon and support us with technical problems. Thanks to all the Hampton Academy staff for all their cooperation. Many were blindsided with requests for interviews for this edition, and complied with a smile. Thanks to the entire newspapers staff for their awesome ideas for this newspaper. You have all been so fun to work with. Thanks to the Winnacunnet High School Winnachronicle staff for taking the time to point us in the "write" direction. Finally, thanks to Steven LaBranche at Seacoast newspapers in Stratham. He has walked us through every step of the process of writing and publishing a newspaper. We wouldn't have been here today without everyone's help.

The process has been long. We began brainstorming for the paper in October by making a list of goals. Our "bluetastic" goals are to create an abundance of information for our school and community to read. We want there to be-a permanent record of all the great things we do at the Academy. Another goal is to catch people's attention to issues that affect their school. That means you! If something's an issue, we want you to know about it. Finally, we want to make the school a better place with our words. You should enjoy reading the paper and we hope to make you smile and think.

With all the great columns, pictures, and interviews, we are extremely excited by what we have planned. We will be having regular features of opinions, advice columns, movie and game reviews, sports, photos, cartoons, graphic designs, cheers and jeers (what's good and bad about things) and much, much more.

Enjoy your new paper!