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Local students learn fundamentals of journalism
McCOOK, Neb. - Several students participated in an eight-day journalism camp where they listened to speakers and wrote their own news stories based on what they learned during their time at the camp.
The camp was part of a youth journalism program to help eliminate news deserts in rural parts of the country.
The camp was sponsored by a National Writing Project grant to properly equip youth to fight these news deserts.
Throughout the course of the camp, the students heard and learned from professional journalists from the Flatwater Free Press, like Destiny Herbers, who worked on the coverage of the Gage County horse neglect case, from public relations directors, photojournalist, and interns from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to cover all different aspects of journalism.
Hosted by Ronda Graff and Sarah Hoyt, the new advisor of the McCook High School Stampede, the camp was designed to help some of the prospective Stampede staff members learn how to write news stories.
“Each of them has chosen a topic that is relevant to them as a teenager that is living in southwest Nebraska. So each of them has a different topic and we’ve kind of gone through the process of what it takes to write an effective news article,” Hoyt said.
“And so, they’re doing research, they’re interviewing different people and producing a final article that will be published on a website that is provided through our grant, and the potential is for them to be published in addition to that.”
Hoyt is taking over as the staff advisor for the Stampede at the beginning of next school year, and is ready for the spot.
“I’m really looking forward to teaching a class that’s an elective, I have taught a core class that all kids have to take, so I’m looking forward to teaching a class that kids hopefully want to take and are focused on writing,” Hoyt said.
The students’ projects were supposed to be something personal to them and be something they wanted to change or see changed in their community.
“I just like writing mostly human interest and issues. The article I’m doing is our football booklets, cause each summer we give out football booklets for our fundraiser, and I went online and they have nothing local, where our coupon books were local even before this,” junior Jazmine Martinez-Conroy said.
The students all had to do ample research and go gather proper material for each of their articles.
“I’m writing about the cell phone policy at the school, I went to a school board meeting a couple days ago and I sent emails to a couple of people on the school board,” senior Lacey Rouse said.
Even if the students aren’t specifically focused on journalism, the camp still serves as a learning opportunity and a way to get involved.
“It wasn’t my go-to, I thought that doing newspaper was something I could never do and I could never get involved, but now I feel like a journalist and I could write articles in my free time and I’m more involved,” Martinez-Conroy said.
The students are finishing their respective stories and hearing from the last scheduled speakers for the camp.