By Hayden Garrett
Every day. Every week. Once a year. Delta’s media classes crank out new information. But where’s the recognition?
“Our Eagle Zone News is honestly one of the very best in the entire state. It really is. We take it for granted because we watch it every day,” communications teacher Tim Cleland said.
Although many schools have at least one media class, Delta High School has three. The Eagle Zone News telecommunications class produces a broadcast every day. The Eagle’s Eye newspaper class has stories being published frequently throughout the week by a team of 37 high school students. And the Deltonian yearbook class involves 24 students who work every day to finish a 188-page book rewinding on the school year.
Eagle Zone News films and edits every day in first and second period and is shown in classes during fourth. They cover school news, sports, weather, birthdays and lunch. The show is produced by juniors and seniors with guidance from their teacher.
To some students in this class it is something fun they looked forward to and have always been excited to join.
“I did EZN because I liked watching it when I was younger, freshman year and sophomore year, and I always thought it’d be fun,” senior Collin Haughn said.
While Collin looked up to his peers at his own school and that’s why he wanted to join, another student, senior Camden Schwering, said, “I just thought it would be cool to do what the professionals do.”
Haughn and Schwering are the two primary editors in the EZN classes. They use iMovie software to edit the broadcast and have experimented with Final Cut Pro.
Although there is a lot of talk of it being fun and something students want to do, it still comes with many responsibilities every morning. Writing scripts, filming, interviewing, editing, producing and everything in between must be done quickly by the students.
While EZN works together to produce their broadcast, the Eagle’s Eye newspaper students work by themselves to produce a feature story every three to four weeks.
EZN’s job is to inform the students about the bigger picture of what’s going on in the school, but newspaper takes a closer look at everything and tells stories in greater detail.
For some students telling others’ stories is something that they really enjoy because they get to recognize others’ hard work.
“I like to focus on more feature stories so I think the people I write about and their family being able to see that the friend or kid is being written about is impactful,” sophomore newspaper student Josey Morris said.
Morris has written eight full-length stories over the past two school years. Some examples include “Vertical Alignment,” a story about teachers that work both at the high school and the middle school throughout the day, and “New Ways New Plays,” a story about Delta’s theater program and the teacher in charge of it.
EZN and newspaper classes have their differences, but newspaper also comes with its own personal and heavy responsibilities.
“Getting stuff done in a certain time frame, talking to a lot of people like interviewing, being disciplined, writing stories in your free time,” sophomore Kye Berger said, listing some of the class responsibilities.
Since joining this class last year Berger has contributed nine stories. His stories range from “Against The Odds,” a story about the girls’ basketball team’s journey, to “Rodeo Life,” highlighting a couple of student bull riders at Delta and is currently working on a story about technology director Dr. Lance Brand, who has traveled to all 50 states and has visited more than half of the national parks.
While this area of classes doesn’t get the most recognition, Cleland still shares the stories with those written about and many have nothing but kind things to say about what was witten.
A second-year newspaper student, sophomore Maddox Weddle, wrote a feature story ov er senior wrestler Ayden Bollinger.
“Seeing the wrestling team get such great coverage makes me smile,” Ayden’s father wrote in an email to Mr. Cleland after reading the story. “I would love for you to tell Mr. Maddox Weddle his article was spectacular.”
Not only does this class have other kind words and feedback to back up and prove their hard work, but they also received the Cardinal Award for the best high school online newspaper at last year’s Ball State Journalism Day contest. The newspaper site is www.dhseagleseye.com.
Being in this class doesn’t just mean writing some paragraphs. It means gathering the correct information, getting photos, and telling an in-depth story about what students or teachers are doing or have done in the community at Delta. Newspaper students have been able to post 113 different stories just this school year.
Just like the other two classes, yearbook puts in work day after day with little recognition. The older you get the more important your yearbook becomes, slowly turning into an artifact from your high school days. Yet people rarely think about everything that went into the production of the book.
“In yearbook, you’re working, working, working with nothing to show until the very end,” Cleland says.
Yearbook students’ responsibilities consist of doing their “spreads.” These spreads are the pages of the yearbook that they are assigned to, designing and completing in order for the book to be able to be put together. This means getting pictures, writing captions, creating headlines, finding answers, and editing it all together.
“Just getting my spreads done and getting out and doing what you need to get done,” senior Campbell Light said. “There’s just a lot of tiny details in the yearbook that you may not see but you would notice if it wasn’t there that takes a lot of time.”
Some students took this class just for “fun,” but don’t realize how charshed these books will become.
“I thought it would be interesting to hear people’s answers,” sophomore Colten Cruea said, not taking into account how important he will be to the completion of this book.
Cruea is one of the editors for yearbook, contributing to the end sheets, the cover and some of his own spreads.
Although his job may carry a heavier load than some of the others in yearbook, everyone still has to keep up on their responsibilities and make sure they are prepared each day.
“Yearbook is about staying organized,” Cruea said. “You do have deadlines, and you kind of learn to not procrastinate and not put everything off to the last minute.”
It’s easy to see Delta’s accomplishments with sports, art, band, choir, and more because of these journalists who take a moment to highlight others’ hard work while putting aside their own successes.
