Journalism is a class that consists of writing, interviewing, and giving information about Buena Park High School student news. The journalism class consists of many students in different grade levels with many responsibilities and opportunities to grow. In class, students are responsible for deciding their monthly article topic, who they will interview, editing their YouTube video, and writing their article by the end of each month. Mr. Arnold is the journalism teacher and has been teaching journalism since 2021. He described the teaching experience as the “wildest ride in the wilderness.“
As we mentioned before, being in journalism comes with a lot of responsibilities. Each group consists of 4 people who decide what they will provide to the group: taking pictures, interviewing, writing, and editing. Group members have the responsibility of keeping up with their work by certain deadlines. We have the decision of deciding what to ask when interviewing and who we will be interviewing. Something that takes the longest is the writing and editing because you always have to go back and check that there aren’t any spelling errors or audio errors. Having this many responsibilities is important because it allows students to be organized which helps us in our future careers.
The first person we interviewed in journalism was Sophomore, Jay Carroll. Her article for February is about a criminal case called the Honor Roll Murder that happened in Orange County back in the 90’s. She says “One of the first things I do is look up reliable sources, because you don’t want to look up random blogs or people you can’t trust. So you look up reliable sources like the LA Times, The Orange County Register, things that you know you can get straight facts from”.
The next person we interviewed was Senior, Angel Jimenez (AJ). His monthly article is about Mental Health and the importance of it during Valentine’s Day. We asked AJ how he felt about writing monthly articles. He says, “I like it because it allows us to do something new every month and it provides a lot of variety in our content”. AJ has been in journalism for 2 years, and in those past 2 years, he has rated his experience a 10/10.
We next interviewed Senior, Tony Davis . His article for this month is based on AP Capstone. They’re going to cover the program as well as who benefits from it. He says “Definitely doing some research, I didn’t have to do much this time because I was in AP Capstone so it was pretty easy to get a grip of what we’re researching on, and pretty much just figure out our schedule and what we’re gonna do interview wise when we’re gonna interview people, simple stuff like that. To stay consistent, he writes outside. He says “I noticed that I’m more focused. So I try to stay to myself and focus on what I have to do, just get it done and be able to relax in class. “. One of the reasons he joined journalism is because he likes writing, so he wanted to join to write more and get more practice at it.
Lastly, we interviewed Senior Anthony Irons (Irons). His article for February is about CIF Sports. We asked him, “How do you feel about writing monthly articles? He said, “It’s a new way of expressing our school in different ways because everybody doesn’t know what’s going on in school so we just express it in different topics”. Irons rates his experience in journalism a 12/10. His plan for this month’s article is for people to see how everybody is doing in winter sports and CIF and who’s winning and losing.
To add on, we asked our interviewees about how they felt about the environment of journalism. Angel Jimenez (senior AJ) was asked what he thinks about the environment of journalism and he answered “I feel pretty good about the environment, the classroom is nice, the setting is nice, the teacher is cool and my classmates are also really chill.” We then asked Sophomore Jay Caroll and she responded by saying “I think it’s really fun, the program is still growing and figuring things out as we go, so I think it’s a place where you can go experiment and see what works and what doesn’t.” An environment specifically is important for students because it gives them motivation and makes them feel like they belong somewhere. Overall, Room 34 is somewhere where students feel important and can be themselves.
In Conclusion, Journalism is a great class if you’re interested in writing, communicating with people such as interviewing, and going out and taking pictures of school events. It’s a good way to showcase and talk about upcoming school events and things outside of school events. Journalism students enjoy coming to class every day. Many long-lasting bonds have been formed and new skills have been taught.
