Three years ago, past Tower alum and current Jones College Prep High School AP Government teacher, John Lund ’03, was marking up his school’s newspaper. His department chair looked over his shoulder, saw the red marks he scribbled on the page and offered Lund to take over advising their paper.

“I basically replicated The Tower at the school I teach over here in Chicago,” Lund said.

According to Lund, his exposure to journalism from The Tower gave him a headstart into his career with NBC and CBS. He now teaches at a Chicago high school and has a journalism class which he runs closely to how Jeff Nardone did, Lund said.

“The thing that’s hard about it with him being gone is I can’t ask someone how to run it,” Lund said. “There’s no rule book to a journalism class, especially when a lot of people aren’t as good as The Tower.”

Lund has worked basically on memory to publish The Blueprint, he said.

“I have my bound editions of the Tower in my filing cabinet, and I pull them out every once and awhile to see ‘how did we do this?’,” Lund said.

According to Lund, it can be hard to mimic The Tower because of the different dynamics of South and his current school.

“The kids that go here come from all over the city, and are not as tightly knit as Grosse Pointe,” he said.

No matter the challenges, Lund believes the importance of journalism trumps any adversity.

“It’s invaluable, especially when a program like The Tower has been around for 90 years,” Lund said. “It’s important to highlight because it’s one of the better programs at South and always has been.”

Lund doesn’t know what lies ahead in the future, he said. He hopes to be principal or dean at a journalism school.

“I definitely see sticking with it [journalism], but what form I take it is up to debate,” Lund said.