The Darlingtonian staff just published the first multimedia story of the year, a feature on Opening Convocation, which included a Soundcloud audio file and photo gallery. What makes me proud is that this story is the result of a group effort of students new to Student Publications, created during our after-school activity block during the first week of classes.
We started the first day of school with a mini-lesson on photo composition and basic DSLR camera settings. The second day, we took a look at previous Convocation ceremonies to familiarize those new to Darlington with what the key moments of the event would be. We discussed what new angles we could capture to cover the event in a way different from years past.
Wednesday morning, a team of photographers -- including Social Media Editor Matthew McConnell, a junior; freshmen Tammy Yan and Matyah Jackson; and sophomores Nolan Wilson, Katherine Gu, and Laura Zhang -- split up around the Huffman Athletic Center to document the ceremony. In the audience, sophomore Abby Bailey; Darlingtonian Managing Editor Emily Orr, a junior; and sophomore Ishani Desai acted as reporters, jotting down notes and quotes from the speeches. Instinctively, Abby decided to turn the voice recorder on her iPhone on to capture the entire 30-minute event so she could pull quotes to help with our story; this ended up being embedded in an Soundcloud file. Additionally, Matthew posted a Snapchat Story of the event as it was occurring.
When we gathered after school to go over the files and notes, we discovered that out of all of our camera cards, one was corrupted, one was under-exposed and one had almost all blurry photos. This taught the staff a very valuable lesson (at major events, multiple photographers are needed) and hopefully showed them just how valuable their efforts are.
The staff brainstormed what the most memorable moments were, and freshmen Long Nguyen and Matyah went armed with reporter’s notebooks to conduct man-on-the street interviews, gathering answers to the angles we wanted to feature. Meanwhile, Matthew, freshman Amelia Allen and Editor-in-Chief Ethan Pender, a senior, went to investigate whether Shem’s bell was actually the original and whether it was permanently broken after Student Body President Will Crawford rang it.
While Ishani started drafting the story, Long and Matyah came back to the room with their quotes, Will stopped by for an interview, and the investigative group came back with confirmation the bell was the original after interviewing Upper School Director Matt Peer and Head of School Brent Bell. Senior Selena Chen and junior Nina Zhou were at the computer choosing the best photos to feature in the gallery.
Ethan edited an initial draft Wednesday evening. Thursday after school, Ishani completed the draft; Long exported photos to under 1 MB in order to be uploaded to Darlingtonian.com; Selena and Nina captioned the photos; Ethan created our Soundcloud profile, embedded the audio file on our site, and edited the piece; and Matyah drafted the Tweet to announce that the story had been published.
How these students collaborated the first four days of school to create a multimedia story is a good representation of the process of creating scholastic journalism. They planned for coverage, experienced what happens when things go wrong, and regrouped and worked together under a deadline to produce a story that may not be perfect but captures students' voices on a campus event in a timely manner.
I look forward to seeing what they produce next.
Interested in joining Student Publications? Come to Mrs. Forgette’s room after school Monday - Thursday anytime before 5 p.m. or contact Editor-in-Chief Ethan Pender at epender@darlingtonschool.org.
Click here to see Student Publications' coverage of Opening Convocation on The Darlington website.
