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The Beauty of Broadcast
South Salem's Broadcasting Program won "Best in Show" at the 2025 Fall Media Day
I Spent My Junior Year Getting the Inside Scoop
Throughout 2024-2025, I hosted a broadcast television show with my best friend, Chloe. True to our journalistic selves, we named it The Inside Scoop with Chloe and Connor.
Throughout my journalism career, I've always been one to dive deep and look for a story in anything. Whether I was going to cover it or not, I was inquisitive and I wanted to know as much as I could about anything. So, when my adviser told me I could have my own broadcast show, I was thrilled. I'm quite the conversationalist, and I've known that the one downfall about the written word is that you cannot effectively capture every sound, reaction and expression the person you are featuring makes. So I knew that on my broadcast show, I wanted to stick mostly to profile features, hoping to strike gold with some stellar conversations.
But more than just creating profiles, I wanted to highlight stories of students I knew didn't have a lot of recognition, but did a lot good. I looked around for kids who were involved heavily in our community and added to our diversity.
In our second-ever episode, Chloe and I hosted Georgia Howard, an IB Diploma Recipient, Athlete and NHS leader.
In these 17 minutes, we got an insanely funny story about one of her cross country races , and how she uses her personal relations with fellow IB members to preserve through the perils of high school.
Georgia was open and honest on the struggles of the IB Diploma program, sharing details of all-night study sessions and which classes bothered her the most. She provided raw answers to questions that typically garner rather ordinary answers. Her charismatic presence was a great contrast to the pre-concieved idea that most kids have about academically-driven students like Georgia -- that they are boring.
She gave the IB program a real, honest analysis rather than a face value over view, which was essentially the goal of the broadcast.
In another episode we produced, we had on a pair of best friends, Adrian and Grayson, who were running for our school's ASB President and VP. While these guys are well known, they aren't known to be as serious as this, and their campaign run sort of shocked our school. So, to figure out why a pair of laid-back best friends decided to run for the student government, we got them on the broadcast!
The boys brought up fresh ideas for student involvement and community enrichment they had planned for their hopefully successful election and just for the rest of their campaign. So, when they shared the news of their plans, we got to break that side of the story as well, which was awesome!
Behind the Cameras, Not Just In Front
As much time as I spent in front of the camera, I spent directing other student broadcasts. I learned how to effectively use a Tri-Caster, upload news scripts to the teleprompters and accurately pace them, and switch camera angles quickly.
Because of the skills I learned directing broadcasts for other students, my adviser trusted me to teach his prerequisite class how to navigate the control room. While I didn't teach them everything, I showed them which buttons to press when and how to accurately time camera angle switches when the speaker changes.
After they learned from both my adviser and I, a lot of them still came to me for advice or for help with framing camera shots or uploading news anchor scripts.
Here are some of the students I helped teach. They are directing and filming their very own show, The Saxon Minute. It's a news broadcast which quickly runs over the newest news in our school for that week.
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