Andover’s independent voice

Founded in 1857, The Phillipian is the nation’s oldest continuously published high school newspaper—a fully student-run, uncensored publication that chronicles both the everyday and extraordinary rhythms of life at Phillips Academy.

“Local news is the first line of truth,” says Faculty Emerita Nina Scott P’05, ’06, ’11, a former longtime advisor and English instructor whose Journalism 101 book still guides high school students across the country. “It’s a hard job and it gives the people doing it a mission that’s extraordinary. They are digging for the truth and bringing it to light, often when no one else is looking for it.”

Student journalists do much more than capture the week’s headlines, adds history and social science instructor Tracy Ainsworth P’24, ’27, a faculty advisor to The Phillipian. They accept “an incredible responsibility—not only to report honestly and fairly and to hold those in power accountable, but also to represent student voices and to serve as a source of historical and institutional memory for their community.” 

Working together to gather and write the news of their community also teaches students invaluable lessons about what it means to be an engaged citizen. 

“This is an important time for young people to see that their perspectives matter, that their choices matter,” Ainsworth says. “The role demands reflection, giving students the confidence and the skills to make informed, ethical decisions long after they’ve left the basement of Morse Hall. The newsroom is a lab of democracy and civic literacy—a chance to practice and enact the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. I’m not sure we’ve ever needed that more.”

That mission has deep roots at Andover. Founder Samuel Phillips Jr. helped shape the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, whose Article XVI proclaimed: “The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state.” That principle would later inspire the First Amendment—a legacy still alive in the hands of today’s young reporters.

When John Palfrey arrived as head of school in 2012, The Phillipian’s editor came to him with a problem: a looming budget shortfall. “I told him, ‘If you want to be an independent newspaper, you can’t rely on the person you’re covering to close your gap,’” Palfrey recalls. Alumni quickly rallied to endow the paper, ensuring its financial independence for years to come.

For each new crop of editors, that independence continues to connect and inform Andover’s global community as student journalists cover news across student life, campus governance, and policy changes. “Even though our paper prints weekly on campus, we post online and hear from alumni who—even years later—still feel part of Andover,” says Executive Digital Editor Abby Zhu ’26. “That they’re still reading and weighing in from afar is special and creates new ways to serve our community.”