Crafting Innovative Student News Stories During School Closures

When school isn’t physically in session, your news team can’t cover the sports games, school plays, or grab a student in the hallway for an impromptu interview. For school news teams, that means your students have to dig deeper to find meaningful stories to report that are relevant, informative, and entertaining. Lucky for the Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California, digging deeper is the most exciting part of the job. 

Since the state mandated stay-at-home orders went into effect, the students have been broadcasting their weekly news show and comedy special while virtually collaborating on story ideas and production. We spoke with television production teacher Elisia Harkins-James to learn more about how her students are staying creative with their newscast.

Tell us about your video production department. 

We do a morning news show that airs every Friday at our school. It’s a 10-minute show, and it usually covers things that are happening on our campus or events that are happening in the community. 

The kids have all the creative control of the show. My job is to make sure we don’t do anything that’s going to get me in trouble. Sometimes we push the envelope, and sometimes we pull back on the envelope and wait for another time to push it. For the most part, it’s a lot of fun. 

When did your school close?

Our school officially closed its doors on March 23. They actually cancelled school on March 20. We were at the Student Television Network conference in Washington DC. We got there two days early, and then they cancelled the conference while we were there. My principal had to deal with the closing of our school plus trying to bring myself and 15 students home. 

Whose idea was it to keep the newscast going?

Our principal and our assistant principal wanted to make sure everything stayed as normal as possible, so I thought maybe we can try to keep doing the show. I knew we had some stories that we didn't air that were on the computers in school. I said, “Well let’s just pull everything we can off all the computers and take it home.” I had a video conference with the executives of our show and I said, “What do you want to do?” They said, “Ms. Harkins, let’s do it. Let’s keep it moving.”

They figured out how to get anchors and get the scripts. For the first two weeks, we pulled stories we already had. For the last two weeks, we pulled stories we had made. The producers had to find the anchors in our class, get the anchors to write the scripts, and the producers had to review it. The anchors shot their information at home and then everybody sent everything to my assistant, and my assistant had to edit the show together. 

When we come back from spring break, the kids are going to edit the show. We had to deal with a lot of software issues to make that happen, so that’s why we edited the show on our end. 

What equipment are you using?

The students are filming on their phones and their iPads. I told them, “Whatever you have, that’s what we have to deal with.” The iPads come with iMovie. Our school has licenses for Adobe. Some kids have Premiere, but not everybody. The majority of the kids are using iMovie to edit. 

What kind of stories are you covering?

We did a story about how to not get the virus. A lot of that was done at home. They did another story called 50 things to do while you're quarantined. That was a lot of b-roll with voice over text that they shot at home. They are using the resources they have to do it. 

We are a private school, so we do three news shows per month that are very news and community related. The last show we do is more like an SNL (Saturday Night Live) type show that we do once a month - a comedy show. The kids came up with the idea. 

People are talking about the lack of toilet paper. So they made a whole story about the lack of toilet paper. Another one was that kids want to date. Well what can we do? Virtual dating. So they did another skit on virtual dating. The kids have been coming up with ideas. When they come back from break, they’re doing this thing that they saw Ellen Degeneres do where she just called people on the phone. They’re going to do a spoof of that where they call kids and ask what they did over spring break. 

How are you sharing the videos?

We use YouTube. Everyday, there’s a morning announcement bulletin, and teachers have to go over what’s happening. On Friday, my principal takes that link and sends it out to everybody. People are supposed to be watching it. It’s on our school’s website and we put it on social media as well. 

How are the students responding?

I think it has boosted morale. They have to go out, and they have to find stories. We did one on how athletes can stay in shape in quarantine. We talked about Lebron and other athletes. But then we gave it a more home feel; we asked athletes at our school. Those athletes at our school had to go out, take a camera or their iPads, videotape themselves and then shoot b-roll for what they were talking about. 

My kids love it. I seriously think they think they’re CNN now. They went out of their way to come up with stories. 

For instance, they thought, “Let’s talk to some of the people at our school who have restaurants and how this is affecting them.” They asked people on social media: “Hey, if your dad or mom owns a business and you go to our school, we want to interview them.” They go out and they find the people to do it. I think it’s been really good because they’re still running [the show] just like we were in class. They’re still having fun looking for story ideas. To me, it’s still normal.

How is the community responding?

Parents are excited like the kids. “I can't believe you guys are still doing it.” Our principal has been very supportive. The teachers think it’s the best thing in the world. It gives the kids something to look forward to every Friday.

Do you have any advice for fellow teachers in the same position?

This is the best part now. Whenever we tried to do stories before and we tried to talk to the CDC or we tried to talk to somebody like the senator, we couldn’t get them. We’re finding out going into this, everybody is at home, so we've been able to interview a lot of people. That’s another option for them.