Broadcast Journalism
My claim to fame around Neenah High School is the Rocket News, a weekly video-based program which encompasses everything happening at the school in the given week that episode comes out. From club fundraisers to nail-biter sporting events to musical performances, Rocket News affords to any school event, no matter how small, the attention of our entire student body of 2000 kids.
With the 2022-'23 year being the last that the current high school will be used as a high school, I decided to kick off the year by providing a historical retrospective of the buildings that served its role in the past, with animations of how the current building changed over time. This task required multiple hours of digging through the Public Library's stash of old yearbooks for the information needed, but I got it done!
The most recent episode, at the time of this writing. With the start of the new year, I tested out a couple visual tweaks that may make the episode itself more interesting to prospective viewers.
As long as there's school that week, there's an episode. I started doing this in December of 2021, and since then I have not missed a week, even working under strenuous production schedules and while simultaneously balancing a full advanced course load.
And yet making the news has never been for a grade or for a paycheck. It's merely a result of my desire to inform and educate the student body about what happens around them, and to do so in a way that is engaging to the students while also not sacrificing the objectivity that defines a professional news broadcast. Being a journalist and anchor has significantly boosted by communication skills, radically transforming me from the timid and antisocial individual I was just a year prior.
Interviewing excited athletes at the awards ceremony for a cross country meet in which they took 1st place.
Talking to student audience members following the premiere of the school Drama Club's fall play.
Listening to band students reflect on what went well during their concert.