Elise Butler loves hockey.

It's a fact evidenced by her hockey blog, which she updates almost daily.

So when Butler was assigned a trend story during the journalism program at the National High School Institute, her mind naturally jumped to one topic. Hockey.

Butler, of White Bear Lake, Minn., wrote about the increasing salaries of National Hockey League players. And since she chose a topic that interested her, Butler enjoyed the assignment.

“Doing the research was interesting to me,” she said. “I really liked my topic, and I knew I had enough background knowledge to go in-depth.”

Butler and 87 other cherubs researched a trend, interviewed experts and wrote a 1,000-word story. Instructor John Kupetz calls it “the talisman of your cherub journey,” because it requires more time, research, reporting and writing than any other assignment.

The trend story is assigned during the third week of the program and incorporates everything students learned up to that point, from trying to contact important sources to organizing all of the information so the article flows.

“Things I remember instructors saying in the lectures actually came into play,” Talia Roth, of McLean, Va., said. “The most important was probably being able to think on my feet and come up with good follow-up questions while interviewing.”

The trend story is one of the few assignments where cherubs are “real journalists,” Kupetz said. Instead of just writing the lead or reporting on a mock meeting, students are writing about a current trend and talking to real sources.

“It’s not play journalism,” Kupetz said. “When they talk to their sources, [they] say I’m a reporter, not a student.”

Kupetz said one of his main hopes with the trend story is that they will all be published and students can use them as clips when applying for jobs or internships.

“Students are actually writing for publication,” Kupetz said. “Even if you only publish it in your high school newspaper, it’s still being published.”

Instead of the usual one-hour or one-day deadline, they were allowed a whole week to work on the assignment. Students spent as much time as possible understanding their trend so they could communicate it to the reader.

“I learned a lot about online diets,” Erica Petri, of Tenafly, N.J., said. “More than I’ll ever need to know in my life.”

Petri also learned that persistence pays when trying to get a hold of important sources. She called and e-mailed the director of the public relations department at SparkPeople.com, a diet Web site, 10 times before she got a response.

“It was frustrating, but he was really nice, and it was very helpful when he finally did get back to me,” she said.

Roth also had trouble with sources—once she actually got them on the phone.

“Talking to people on the phone is a lot different than in person,” she said. “It’s harder to have a conversation. They would answer a completely different question than the one I asked.”

Though cherubs faced difficulties when working on the trend story, Kupetz is confident that all cherubs can publish their story in their high school or local newspaper.