Screen test
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 3 years, 8 months AGO
The Royal High School News crew (from left): Carter Noftle, Katie Carlson, Paden Livingston, Haley Piercy and Detton Jenks.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Paden Livingston, left, and Katie Carlson prepare to shoot a segment for Royal High School News.
Katie Carlson, right, quizzes Royal High School teacher Jeremy Elliott on his Christmas favorites while Paden Livingston records the segment.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | December 13, 2022 1:30 AM
ROYAL CITY — Royal High School students can’t say they don’t know what’s going on in their school.
“Hello, and welcome to this … edition of Royal High School News,” says a young anchorperson, holding a printed script and flanked by a classmate and a coffee mug that says “RHS News.”
The edition changes according to whatever is being recognized on that particular day: National Education Week on Dec. 2, National Zipper Day on April 29. The teenage journalists go on to introduce themselves and the happenings of the day at Royal High School before launching into an interview with a teacher or an athlete.
“The first week, which would be this week, we're planning everything out: what stories we're going to do, everything that needs to get reported,” said Paden Livingston, one of the writers for RHS News. “We're gathering data, and then filming stuff for whatever stories we're doing – and then we just kind of get started working on editing.”
Livingston is joined in writing the news by Katie Carlson, Haley Piercy, Detton Jenks and Carter Noftle. Carlson and Livingston do the majority of the editing as well as filming special segments with students and teachers. Piercy and Jenks focus primarily on senior spotlights, highlighting some of Royal’s outstanding student-athletes. Noftle is currently working on a sports highlight video to wrap up the fall season.
“Then next week, we team up with (the leadership class), and they provide on-air talent,” Livingston said. “They're the anchors and the reporters, and they kind of interact with whatever stories we edited. We usually film that on a Wednesday, so our next one would be next Wednesday (Dec. 14).”
After the final edits are made, the finished product posts to YouTube on Friday.
“We actually began doing it more seriously,” said RHS teacher Jens Jensen, the program’s advisor. “And as time has gone on, we still do the news, they still get the information they need to get, but we do stories half the time that are more playful, fun stuff to get a laugh, to get people to understand that life is maybe not all that serious.”
The digital captions – known as chyrons – introducing the news anchors include an inside joke about the student. Last week’s broadcast identified Maria Salas as “Involved in too many things” and co-anchor Briana Guerrero as “Looks familiar.” Each week’s edition includes something light and teen-oriented. The Dec. 2 edition, for instance, featured student Jocelyn Jenks quizzing teachers with fragments of current slang.
“Hi, and welcome to ‘Are You Trendier than a Teenage Girl,’” Jenks said to the audience, before cornering one teacher after another and asking them to define terms like “vibing” and “hits different,” or name songs off the newest Taylor Swift album. A correct answer was deemed a “slay”; the more numerous wrong answers got a “nay.”
The same edition ended with an in-depth interview with Royal’s student resource officer, RPD Officer Josh Bronn.
“We started the student news last year,” Jensen said. “Really, it was in response to coming out of COVID and getting back to school, and trying to get a positive school culture kick-started again.”
One of the segments the team was filming Wednesday was a competition between teachers Jess Christensen and Jeremy Elliott, to see which could answer more questions in a three-minute period. Because of the season, the questions were Christmas-themed.
Best Christmas gift ever received? Christensen: A baby. Elliott: A bicycle. Favorite Christmas song? Christensen: “Baby, it’s Cold Outside.” Elliott: “Silent Night.” Elves or yetis? Christensen: Elves. Elliott: Yetis. Elliott won the competition 14 questions to 13, perhaps because Christiensen couldn’t settle quickly on her favorite reindeer.
“You’ve got two things,” Jensen said. “You're coming out of COVID, so you have an issue with that. And then number two, you have this generation that is really attached to their phone. So trying to get them to kind of look up and recognize that there's people around them that are living and breathing.”
The RHS News program is actually just one function of Jensen’s student tech support program, which does all sorts of technical projects around the school, including managing labs, printing banners and operating the school’s farm bot, among myriad other things.
“There's a pretty wide array of things that those kids do,” Jensen said. “It's centered in technology and it's fun, because it's a good opportunity. You know, it provides students who I think might disengage a little bit. Sometimes we can struggle to meet the needs of those students who are capable and looking for more autonomy. So (this provides) them with something large to pick up and carry on their own as far as they can.”
Joel Martin can be reached via email at [email protected].
Care to watch?
Royal High School News can be seen at www.youtube.com/@mr.jensen8082.
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Quincy National Night Out scales down
QUINCY — Quincy’s National Night Out was more compact this year, which worked out well, said QPD Sgt. Joe Westby, who’s in charge of event planning for the Quincy Police Department. “National Night Out is a big event, and the fact that we’re able to shrink it up is like a breath of fresh air,” Westby said. “If you're always doing the same thing, it's kind of nice to switch things up and see how it works.” National Night Out took place Thursday on the block of C Street next to the police station, a shift from previous years when it was held at Lauzier Park. The smaller space meant fewer emergency vehicles for children to explore, but it also meant less walking for attendees. Grant County Fire District 5 brought a fire truck, and the Grant County Sheriff’s Office had a patrol boat. Renew, the Grant County behavioral health agency, had a booth and so did Quincy Partnership for Youth. Veterans Operation Creation sang the national anthem, and the Quincy Animal Shelter brought kittens that piled over each other making friends with passersby. As before, the QPD served grilled hot dogs.
Quincy Police retirements leave big shoes to fill
QUINCY — There are some big shoes to fill at the Quincy Police Department. “We’re losing 48 years of experience between them,” Quincy Police Chief Ryan Green said at the retirement party for Capt. Jorge Trujillo and Det. Damon Powell Thursday. Trujillo, who grew up in Sunnyside, has been with QPD for 19 years, he said, coming on as a patrol officer fresh out of the military. From there he served as a field training officer, a detective and finally captain. “I consider him my left-hand man,” Green said. “He runs the operations side of the house … He knows the agency very well, and he knows the community.” Trujillo has some projects around the house to tackle now that he’s retired, he said.
Big fun on a small scale
Wheat Land Communities’ Fair opens Thursday
RITZVILLE — The Wheat Land Communities’ Fair isn’t as big or as flashy as some of the county fairs around central Washington, but the folks who keep it going like it just the way it is. “It’s somewhere you can go and get an old-time traditional feeling, and you’re comfortable letting your kids roam the grounds and experience all that it has to offer,” said Board Member Lori Williams. “It’s more of a feeling than (one) specific thing,” The fair starts Thursday in Ritzville and runs through Sunday. Starting Friday, the 56th Ritzville Rodeo will take place alongside the fair at the rodeo grounds. This year the entertainment budget was expanded, Williams said, to be able to offer more fun that’s covered by the cost of admission. For the kids, there’s face painting, balloon art, Lego crafts, races, contests and games. Children can also ride on a little train towed around the fairgrounds behind a tractor.