Blake Beat Online

The Blake Beat is produced by the 53 Journalism 2 students at Silver Spring’s James Hubert Blake High School , which opened in 1998 . The newspaper publishes at 36 pages per issue, with the May issue at 56-60 pages.

Most students join the newspaper staff after successful completion of Journalism 1 , though some join senior year--especially photographers and digital artists— without any journalism experience. The Beat is committed to covering the events and issues important to the Bengal community.

This year’s staff is led by those taking a double-period Journalism commitment in their senior year: Editors-in-Chief Tiko Mason and Kelly Shih ; Associate Editors Ryan Arrendell, Alexander Blocker, Christina deGraft-Johnson, Nick Foley, Melissa Goldberg, Amelia Holgash , Ian Nyanin, Andrew Padgett, Molly Wallace, and Erin Washburn; Directors of Photography Steven Sites and Sacha Vega; and Director of Computer Operations Justin Pereira. Our webmaster and creator of this website is Brendan Lipton.

In six of the last seven years, The Beat has been named as the best or second-best student publication in the state by either the Maryland Scholastic Press Association and/or the Towson University Journalism Department. Each staff sets its own goals, but first among them is to produce the best newspaper the school has ever had. The Beat staff works out of a computer lab with 32 PC s -- each equipped with Indesign, Photoshop, Microsoft Word, and other key programs — and two top-of-the-line HP Laserjet printers. The newspaper is printed in color by Silver Communications in Sterling, Virginia.

Each Blake Beat member has been inoculated against staff infection.