Sports
New scoreboard debuts against Westfield
Three years of car washes, cookie tins, and concession shifts light up for the first time on Friday night.
By Maya E.September 25, 2026
How this story was madeThe path of every story
- A person decides
- The AI helps, and can never approve
The reporterwrites every sentence. A person decides.
AI Coachasks questions about the draft. The AI helps.
Source checkmarks each claim sourced or unsourced. The AI helps.
A student editorreads it first; can send it back or spike it. A person decides.
The final checkcan hold a story back, never let one through. The AI helps.
The adultis the only one who can publish. A person decides.
The paperwith the record of how it was made.
Your school’s paper, in your school’s colors
A sample paper. Northside High School does not exist, and every name, quote and number in it is invented. No real school has published with The Rafters yet.
The AI never writes the story
Here are all seven AI agents we plan to build. None is built yet. Each fills in a fixed form, and no form has room for a story.
| The job | What it gives | Story text |
|---|---|---|
| Story ideas | Weekly ideas, each with someone to interview. | None |
| Keeping work moving | A nudge or a flag when work stalls. | None |
| AI Coach | Questions about the draft. | None |
| Source check | Each claim marked sourced or unsourced. | None |
| Headlines and captions | Options to pick from, or the reporter writes their own. | None |
| The final check | A report on the things that get a school paper in trouble. It can hold a story back and can never let one through. | None |
| Publishing | The page, with a public record of how the story was made. | None |
There is no chat box anywhere in The Rafters, so no one can ask its AI to write a story.
An adult approves every story
- The reporter turns the story in. Nothing a student does can publish it.
- A student editor reads it first, and can send it back or spike it. A spiked story never runs.
- The adult your school names is the only one who can publish, and can take a published story down in one step.
- The AI checks every story for a false claim, a privacy problem or a student who should not be named. It can hold one back, but it has no approve button.
When a story is ready, the adult gets an email with a link to it. They read the story and decide in the app.
What we never collect
- No birthdates, and no age check. Every student is invited by an adult at their school.
- No tracking of students. No analytics on any page that shows student work, and no advertising technology anywhere, on any page, ever.
- Nothing academic. No grades, attendance, discipline or special-education records.
- No audio. Interview recordings stay on the reporter’s own phone.
- No location data in photos. We remove it from every photo.
- One school cannot see another. The database itself walls off each school’s work.
Student newspapers are disappearing
45% of U.S. public high schools had a student newspaper in 2021, down from 64% in 2011.
27% in disadvantaged city neighborhoods and rural areas, where the drop was steepest.
Kent State University’s national surveys of public high schools, 2011 and 2021.
In New York City, nearly 73% of public high schools have no student newspaper, news website or journalism program, a Baruch College study found.
Among the city’s high-poverty schools, the ones with a newspaper had higher graduation rates. That is a correlation, not proof that a newspaper causes anything.
Write to us
Tell us which of these you are.
- You run a school. Tell us about it, and we will tell you honestly whether The Rafters can work for your school, and when.
- You fund local news. Ask for our pilot design and measurement plan.
- You write about this. The sample paper is open. The AI agents above are planned, not built yet.
A person reads it. There is no form on this page and nothing here sets a cookie. We count page views and nothing that could identify you.