Hanks Journalism Students Prepare For New World Of Media
EL PASO, TX — Times have changed.
Gone are the days when your hands would become smeared with ink as you flipped through your school’s newspaper, reading up on stories that may or may not be fresh, considering the paper was only published weekly or bi-weekly.
Hanks High School’s journalism students are now online, writing and posting stories on their web-based publication HanksMedia.com.
The online publication accompanies their hard-copy news magazine, the Scriptoria, which is published every six weeks.
Publication and online advisor Alex Navarro said he came up with the idea of running an onlineschool news publication four years ago, to keep up with the changing face of journalism.
“Every major news publication is online,” says Navarro.
“Once they graduated from high school and went on to college… and they didn’t understand online publication, then it’s almost a disservice to them because then we’re not preparing them to go out and do their job.”
These kids sure are getting prepared.
The 20 students in the media class that handles Scriptoria and HanksMedia.com not only write the stories, they’re also snapping the photos, editing their and their peers’ reports, and posting all the work online.
Instead of writing three to four stories every six weeks as they would for the magazine, they are now writing 10 to 15 stories in that same time period to keep up with the website.
Rachel Cheek, the Editor-in-Chief, thinks the increased workload is inspiring her in more ways than justpursuing a career in journalism when she’s finished with school, which she had expressed she’d like to do.
“It’s really preparing us for what we can do later in life because… even if we don’t plan on going into journalism, it’s giving us real world experience,” said Cheek.
Navarro points out the increased workload is honing their writing skills which will serve them well once they enter college and beyond.
“As teachers, we have to make sure that our students know how to compete on a professional level,” Navarro emphasized.”That in itself isour biggest responsibility.”
Written for kvia.com by Anchor/Reporter Stephanie Valle
