Just For TV Teachers

Seems like it was just yesterday I was wishing the class of 2008 a happy life, and sending them on their way. Now the ‘09 gang leaves, and soon it will be “hello” to the 21st staff of “HTV Magazine.”

Perspective is often best achieved from a distance. I don’t know how to evaluate the class of ‘09 just yet. Some things are certain. They were smart. All eight of my HTV seniors are “A” students, full of potential. They were creative, and when they had to, they could find and gather stories fast. They proved that on our spring break bus tour, when they often had two hours to shoot, and then had to have the edited piece done by noon the next day, no matter how much site-seeing they planned to do.

They were not the most competitive group I’ve had. They were proud of winning our show’s unprecedented tenth broadcast Pacemaker in November, despite little fanfare from our local media. They were also happy to earn our fifth STN Excellence Award in March. But individual awards were just not a priority. We chose to sit out a number of contests because of timing, or expense, or lack of interest. That’s how I handle it. If the kids don’t seem to care about a contest, we pass. Each year is different, and each staff is different. This group seemed to be fine with just doing their stories and doing their part to maintain the tradition of HTV.

I had excellent leadership on the staff. Mehleena, you did great as News Director. Alex, ditto as Line Producer. Sarah, you left a tough act to follow as Chief Photog. Thanks to Fran, Rob, Curtis, Lauren, and Chase as well. I think your willingness to go the extra mile on many of your stories spoke volumes for those who will follow you.

Now I welcome 14 seniors to our staff next year, and only four juniors. We’ll see if it’s a rebuilding year, or a re-loading year. Either way, my job won’t be boring, I’m sure.

To those who drop by to read this blog now and then, have a great summer. I’ll be back a bloggin’ in September.

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About three months ago I heard murmurs about our district, in an effort to cut costs, was seriously considering giving up its cable access channel. We have shown “HTV Magazine” on that channel since October of 1989, so this rumor definitely got my attention. Our entire show is structured to appeal to a citywide audience because we’ve always aired on a channel that’s available citywide.

Then about a month ago I received the official word that our access channel was going away for good. It happened quietly on April 30 at 5 p.m. The plug was pulled. No more citywide exposure for HTV or any other school broadcast in our district. But read on. This is definitely one of those “one door closes, another one opens” scenarios.

I have been in pretty steady contact with our local NBC affiliate, which also owns the local CW channel. We have been discussing a new home for “HTV Magazine,” produced by my kids at Hillcrest, and “Central Intelligence,” produced by students at Central High School, which is about five miles from HHS. Those are the only student-produced shows in our district. The general manager at the NBC affiliate has been supportive all along. He has a half hour on Saturday afternoons he can devote to our shows. So beginning May 16, “CI” and “HTV” willl alternate weekend airings.

This is why the CW is such a great deal for both shows. Previously, on local cable, our programs were going out to maybe 50,000 homes. We were recently moved to a higher cable channel, going from 25 to 81. About half of that 50,000 can even access channel 81. Add to that the fact that a cable access channel, at least around here, does not draw a lot of viewers. That’s because there is nothing but a bulletin board on screen most of the time.

So we lose repeated broadcasts on cable, where our show would play eight times a weekend. That’s gone. BUT we gain exposure to the entire southwest Missouri viewing area for the first time. That’s cable, satellite, and over-the-air viewers who will now all have access to HTV and CI. We will be seen outside the city limits for the first time ever. That is great for us, because all along our guiding mission has been to do stories “by teens, for teens,” and not “by teens at Hillcrest, for teens at Hillcrest.” Our reach has always been broad. We will have to change nothing about our approach.

Sometimes, that dark cloud does have a silver lining. Now we’ll see what the feedback is as our potential viewership goes up by a few hundred thousand in the months ahead. When we were on cable access the last 20 years, there was always this feeling underneath the surface that “hardly anyone watches the show anyway.” Sure, we were proven wrong now and then thanks to e-mail or phone calls about stories we produced. What we wonder now is, just what will teens in schools and towns 75 or 80 miles away think about the show. It should be fun to find out.

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The last nine weeks of the school year…such fun. Seniors are toast, and teachers aren’t far behind. So what’s a TV teacher to do? SURVIVE!

Here are some things I’ve tried in recent years.

*The Music Video Challenge. Kids in any of my five classes can form a team and sign up. I give them 10 songs. They choose one and have two weeks to create a video. Then we show them all to the student body on our “Friday Show,” and I get five or six teachers to go along and have their classes rate the top three. We announce the winner the following week.
*The end-of-the-year show. Come up with a special look back at the year by having kids produce a clips show about the variety of issues you covered, or the most memorable pieces your staff produced. Let all of the kids anchor and introduce a segment. They also have to write an intro that puts their clip in proper context. It’s a nice team effort that can help keep them focused.
*The “Special Edition.” Have your seniors produce one last show, and challenge them to cover one topic from a number of angles. Choose something ambitious, because they are seniors and should be able to handle it. The economy, alcohol abuse, honesty, diversity, whatever works for your situation.
*The orientation video–produce one for next year’s freshmen. It can be the seniors’ “survivial guide” for incoming students. There is room for humor, of course, but it will also be something the school can actually use next fall.
*The “goodbye” video for retiring teachers. It’s a simple shoot and edit, but it can be a wonderful gift for those who are leaving the school and heading into retirement. Shoot teachers, custodians, students and secretaries saying goodbye to the retirees. It will mean a lot, I promise.
*Do an awards banquet. It’s a real highlight for our kids, especially the seniors. Do your own “Emmys” by listing nominees in various categories, then edit clips to show, invite the parents, and give out lots of awards. We even induct kids into our “HTV Hall of Fame” each year, complete with video tributes to their days in our program. Start with dinner, and then hand out honors your kids earned. It will help you build a strong tradition.

Those are just a few ideas to make the end of the year productive. We all know how difficult May can be. There is still time to prepare. Good luck!

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For the next couple of weeks, you can go here: davishtv.tumblr.com to see my new blog about the 2009 HTV Bus Tour.

Links to all the blogs by our students and producers will appear on our home page, www.htvmagazine.com. These blogs will feature plenty of photos, journals, and audio clips.

Only the HTV home page will carry the video stories and other clips we upload from the road. So check in often, and comment when you want. In fact, your kids can upload video responses if they want. Information about how to do that will be on the HTV home page.

Now, I’ve got some packing to do!

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It’s the 20th season of “HTV Magazine” and we have decided to mark the occasion with an absolutely insane spring trip.

We will load up all 19 HTV staffers, six chaperones, and our trusty bus driver on March 18. We’ll head east on a 12-day journey to Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., Virginia Beach, Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis, and plenty of points in between. Each step of the way, we will shoot stories, take photos, write blogs, and upload it all to our website. We will also send the video segments to Apple’s K-12 iTunes site.

This is the ultimate journalism field trip, one that’s been in the works since the fall of 2007. The funding is coming along, although we’re not quite at our goal just yet. Hey, we’ve got a month!

If you or your students would like to play along with this “Where In the World Is HTV?” experience, they can send us feedback during the 12 days of the trip, and even in the weeks that follow. The htvmagazine.com website will make it all possible, thanks to the hard work of our web manager, Mike Teuber. We will accept written responses, and video responses.

For those of you who produce a daily newscast, you will appreciate our challenges as we plan to shoot and edit three packages a day, for 12 days straight. The stories will be diverse, just like our audience. I just hope they’ll be good.

We hope you’ll check in with us now and then, and feel free to participate, or encourage your students to do so. We can’t wait to see America from a bus, with cameras and mics in hand, as we seek out those golden story nuggets that, in the spirit of Charles Kuralt, Steve Hartman and Bob Dotson, are waiting for us just down the road a bit.

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Mitch and Casey were hoping to shoot a story about a runaway everyone
called “Ponyboy,” but not because he was an S. E. Hinton fan. Ponyboy
never read much more than the nearest street sign. The name was actually
pinned on him by his late father, who trained horses on a farm just north
of the city until Ponyboy was 14. After dad passed away, the family fell
apart, and ‘Richard Joe Cants’ disappeared from home, from school, and from
anything close to a normal teen life.

Since they only had four more days to shoot a story for a national
broadcasting contest, the young reporter and photographer were anxious to
catch up with their runaway, who sent word he’d meet them at the “acid
tunnel,” a notorious hang-out underneath the interstate, ironically
located about six blocks from Highway Patrol Trood D headquarters on east
Kearney Street. Nothing much went on in the acid tunnel that a state
trooper would approve of, so Casey was starting to make noise about just
“forgetting the whole thing.”

“He’ll show up. Chill. Nobody’s here. Look.”

Comforting words from Mitch, who had a flashlight bigger than the Canon GL
2 camera they brought with them for the interview. As it beamed a shaft
of light into the opening of the acid tunnel, about the only thing they
saw was graffiti painted on the concrete walls. Some of the words and phrases would
definitely not make it into their story.

Amber Lynn, one of the girls in Mitch’s P.E. class who “knew people” from
the wrong side of the tracks, had told him about Ponyboy a few weeks back
during a day neither of them dressed out for P.E. Mitch kept that
information to himself, knowing it would make a great story. Now it was
time to cash in. Amber had set it all up. The interview would be at 6
p.m. She couldn’t come, so the boys only had her description of Ponyboy
as they watched and waited.

“If this guy has other people with him, I’m out of here,” said Casey.
About that time, a twig breaks in the distance. Someone steps on an
aluminum can. Now feet crunching on gravel. Suddenly, a shadow near the
tunnel opening.

“Are you guys from HTV?” The voice came from a long, skinny body that
matched Amber’s description. The twilight had dimmed, and it was hard to
see facial features.

“We’re Amber’s friends. I’m Mitch.”

“We gotta do this somewhere else. Some people are coming here soon, and
they aren’t my friends, or yours. We need to get now.”

Casey didn’t have to be told twice. He was already walking up the small
hill they had previously climbed down to get to the opening in front of
the tunnel. Mitch asked Ponyboy if he wanted to ride with them.

“I will if you’ll make a stop on the way.” The runaway wasn’t asking, really.

Mitch looked at Casey, who was almost to the car.

“Where you need to go?”

“Take me to the emergency room.”

That’s when the lights from an 18-wheeler passing overhead on the highway
illuminated a stream of blood along the left side of Ponyboy’s head and
neck. Mitch couldn’t tell if he’d been hit, or shot. He yelled at Casey
as Ponyboy passed out and fell to the ground.

The interview would have to wait.

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School newspapers have to do something, and fast. They can not fall victim to the ecomony the way the professional press is. Newspapers are shrinking, or evaporating, before our very eyes. Kids need the experience of putting out a paper. It’s so educational, so cool, and so real. Nothing beats that feeling of holding your story or photo in your hands. I love the feel of newsprint. I also remember the thrill of seeing others read my stories, and those great letters-to-the-editor from someone who wanted to take issue with something I wrote.

So what I’m going to suggest probably flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but the best way to keep your school newspaper vital and important to your community is to publish MORE of them, not less. Smaller, but more frequent, editions of the paper will make it timely and important to your readers. These days, thanks to the Web, timely is more crucial than ever.

The paper at our school used to be a weekly in the 60s and 70s, and now we receive only four “newsmagazines” a year. Four. It’s eight pages full of features and photos. Not really news, because they have lost the ability to do anything timely by publishing quarterly. I understand there are a lot of factors that led to the decision to do four issues per year, but when I learned to love journalism, it was by working on a four-page paper that published every Friday. We had a readership, and we built expectations in that readership. They knew every seventh day they could read news on page one, opinion and op-ed on page two, features on page three, and sports on page four. Ads were placed at the bottom of three and four.

So my first suggestion is for schools to lose the 12-page, every-three-week or four-week features-fest and start covering news again. Every week. It’s worth a try.

Then the second way to save your school newspaper is obvious–you must take it to the Web. Make your paper available online for those who don’t get the hard copy. You can even use the web version to do some DAILY updates, making your site a real source of timely information.

One place you can get some help with that Internet component is here: http://www.highschooljournalism.org/

The best thing we TV teachers can do is make sure our school newspapers don’t disappear. We need the competition, our school needs the recorded history, and guess what? Not every student is suited for a broadcast class. Let’s do what we can to encourage all forms of journalism during a crucial time for the printed word.

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The absolute worst show on TV is ***SPOILER ALERT*** “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.”

It is so bad, on so many levels, that I’m sure it will be a long-running hit on the Family Channel. It’s so putrid, yet I suspect its mesmerized fan base may not even realize it. That’s right, if you love this show, you’re an idiot, or stand by to prove you aren’t. I can just see teens and tweens texting back and forth about Ben and Amy and their dilemmas every Monday night. Or actually having phone conversations about all the dysfunction they witness, all born of the mind of Brenda Hampton, who brought us “Seventh Heaven,” where no cliche was ever safe, no acting teacher ever proud.

The drama that drives “SLOTAT” (my abbreviation–wonder if it will catch on? LOL) is this: Amy had sex for the first time at band camp last summer, and ***SPOILER ALERT*** she’s pregnant! The boy who helped get her that way is Ricky, who is, of course, the baaaaaaaad boy who carries on a “friends with benefits” relationship with Adrian, the smarmy sleaze who wears low-cut blouses no public school outside of southern California would allow. Alas, she is from a broken home. That explains why this girl’s morals would make a pimp blush.

Back to Ben. Since he and Amy are 15, and he loves Amy so completely, he decides to marry her. Happens all the time, right? Two lovestruck kids from upper-middle-class families in southern California run off with fake IDs and get hitched. The smart adults on this show, and by that I mean stupid adults, got to the bottom of that one and made everyone realize that ***SPOILER ALERT*** because they used fake IDs, Ben and Amy weren’t really legally married at all.

Amy has a little sister, Ashley, who is the token “rebel without a cause.” She wears lots of dark clothes, which of course gives her “attitude.” (Somebody tell her 1991 needs its wardrobe back) Ashley has that dry, monotone delivery. You know the kind: “I’m the smartest kid in the room. You all suck.”

Amy and Ashley can always feel better about themselves by looking at their nimrod parents. Anne, the mom, is played by Molly Ringwald, who would have been better off marrying Ducky when she had the chance. Her estranged husband is so anxious to be “close to his girls” that he secretly ***SPOILER ALERT*** moves into the garage. I laughed until I stopped on that one. What a twist. Just keepin’ it real, eh Brenda?

The adults at home are not to be outdone in this show. The adults at school are also lacking a healthy flow of oxygen, letting a teen run a fake ID production lab out of a counselor’s office. To bust the kid who was making the IDs, they do what all wise administrators do–they page him by name on the PA system. “Come get busted now!”

The fact that Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby on the “Sopranos” all those years, is now playing Ben’s father on this show makes me sad. I keep waiting for him to just make Ben and Amy an offer they can’t refuse.

Hampton stays close to her heavenly roots by giving us the “good, Christian girl” named Grace (you can smell the irony, right?), and alas, she’s fallen for Ricky the Baaaaaaaaad Boy. She’s going to be so upset when she finds out about Ricky and Adrian on a “very special SLOTAT” episode in the very near future.

Grace has a special needs brother, and he ***SPOILER ALERT*** falls hard for a special needs girl on their first date. It’s so cute, yet so heartbreaking. But cute.

Cute is how I would describe the major plot points on this show. It’s cute that Amy’s mom actually tells her she’ll need to get a job and take care of her baby when it’s born. Amy finds out after one whole day of looking that it’s hard to get a job! Who knew? It was also cute when the jock took the rap for the kid who actually made those fake IDs. Those dumb cops, and the nosy school counselor, seemed unable to do anything about this miscarriage of justice. Again, adults are basically brain-dead on this show.

The program is about comfortable teens who are always in a little trouble, but not really. There is never any real drama. Everything will work out for these rich, spoiled, self-absorbed young people. They have more safety nets than most of the teens I know. Real life is not this way.

Maybe that’s the worst thing about “SLOTAT.” Just when you think your real challenges are going to get the best of you, kids, and that nobody understands, this show makes you realize that somewhere, a staff of writers and producers, all educated, highly-paid grown-ups, have absolutely no idea what the real American teen faces everyday, or how to portray it on TV.

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I went along to watch an HTV crew do an interview the other day. It was the first time I’ve done that in maybe 15 years, aside from those occasions when we ventured out as an entire staff to shoot a special project or show. So why the interest in this story?

Lauren and Alex, two of my seniors, found Edward Skiffington, a retired soldier who lives on the south side of town. He was the reason I wanted to tag along. “Skiff” is a World War II veteran. He fought in General Patton’s Third Army. You know, the one that marched through Europe after D-Day, defeating the enemy left and right. In fact, he was there the day Patton gave that famous speech immortalized on screen by George C. Scott in the movie, “Patton.” Rent it if you haven’t seen it. Skiff’s descriptions of the real Patton were priceless. He recalled how the General would drive up in a jeep and “rally” the troops with a few choice words. I heard those words in a movie, but Skiff heard them in person 65 years ago on a battlefield.

The girls’ interview provided me with a chance to listen to a 90-year-old hero describe experiences from his life that most of us just read about. Not only did he fight in the Third Army in the last world war, he also saw action in Korea, serving in a famous integrated unit some white soldiers would not be a part of. Skiff said, “I am from Massachussetts, and it was no big deal to me. But there were some it really bothered.” I bet.

He described in detail how lucky he was to survive an attack by the Chinese one day while his unit was on patrol. They took heat from the enemy on both sides of them, and barely got off the road where they were sitting ducks for a few eternal minutes.

Skiff talked proudly, but realistically, about his service. He was single during WWII, which allowed him to joke about the ladies in Paris, all this while his wife sat nearby in the kitchen. I’m sure she’s heard it all before. Lauren and Alex had a few laughs about that one. He also smiled and claimed whiskey got them through the tough times as much as anything back then. I’d say a stiff drink was about the only thing that helped after he walked into a concentration camp the day the Third Army arrived to liberate it in ‘45.

The scenes he described were right out of the accounts you can read in history books. He saw the emaciated prisoners. The German soldiers had fled the camp before Patton’s troops arrived, so the only people left were the civilians who were starving and nearing death. Skiff saw the showers, and heard the prisoners explain that something other than water rained down in there. He also saw the gas chambers, where the bodies from those deadly showers were taken for disposal. He had a few choice words for the “fella in Iran” who recently said the Holocaust didn’t really happen.

I heard once that over 1,000 World War II veterans were dying everyday, and that was several years ago. These men and women are living, breathing history, and when you have a chance to hear someone like Skiff in person, do it. Won’t it be great to share his story with the HTV audience in a few weeks? I don’t know if it meets our usual “do teens care?” criteria. I hope so. But it certainly meets our other one, the “should teens care?” test.

Finally, here’s a big “thanks” to Lauren and Alex for letting me hang around in the background. It’s an hour of my life I will always value, and I pretty sure they feel the same way.

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Since our fifth year on the air in 1993, when one of our HTV reporters looked into the camera and did a commentary about lousy school lunches, we have usually concluded “HTV Magazine” with a segment we call “Just Her Opinion.” Or “Just His Opinion.” Either way, it’s a student sounding off for about two minutes. There have been some shows where we skipped the commentary altogether because nobody had anything to say. But just this past week, before the break, we did something totally new for us. We aired a special edition of “HTV Magazine” including nothing but student commentaries. Eight of them, to be exact. Read on to find out why, and how, it all came about.

December was coming up, but our staff was going to have a tough time doing a regular magazine show. Because of a quirk in the basketball schedule, the winter formal, the “Ladies Pay All” dance, which is always in January, was going to take place on December 19th. Why does that matter when it comes to “HTV Magazine,” you may wonder. It matters because a bunch of our staffers are also on the Student Council Cabinet, the small group that makes sure dances actually happen. They also had to plan the “spirit week” activities before the dance, run the election, host an assembly, decorate the gym, and so on and so forth. It was a week of non-HTV production for them as they met their StuCo duties. Busy kids have busy schedules.

So we made the decision to try something different for HTV #164. It meant coming up with a show that would require less news gathering in the field due to the staff’s time constraints. Since we have this regular commentary segment at the end of every show, which is really a writing assignment as much as anything, our discussion came around to that. A show full of only commentaries by our staff. Soon we had a plan, but several were concerned about pulling it off. You see, the commentaries we do are also attempts at humor, and nothing is tougher than being funny on the air. If the focus of our opinion pieces is to “make a serious point in a funny way,” then that last part, “in a funny way,” is downright scary to most kids.

So I worked with our student News Director to pick the eight commentators who would be on-camera, holding forth about this and that. The other kids were put on teams with the commentators to help them write their “talking points,” and to brainstorm the humorous inserts we put in between those wonderful insights. That is what sets our commentaries apart, we think, from dry editorializing. The students include visual content, often short, funny illustrations of their points, to make the pieces more fun to watch. Otherwise, we’d be creating “talking head” pieces suited as much for radio as television, and that would not take advantage of the medium in which we work.

The results were a mixed bag of moments that bordered on inspired, silly, crazy, creative, and sometimes, very true. That’s when the commentaries are at their best, I think, when they point out a very true situation that we should all think about more.

Some examples, which you can eventually watch on our HTV website when we post the final segments, include a rant about manners and how teens seem to lack them. Another talks about high school gossip, demonstrating the irony of someone complaining about it while passing it along. One student did a true confession many can relate to: he’s a self-declared “wimp,” and his inserts hysterically proved his point. Two girls teamed up in the final commentary of the show to voice their dilemma, shared by many of their gender, about the unwritten rules of teenage break-ups, and how guys and girls handle them differently (and unfairly).

It was a show that challenged our teams to write with visuals in mind, constantly watching their pacing, and choosing their words carefully so they would have the intended impact. It may sound like a pretty frivolous project to you, but trust me, having an opinion, and getting a teen audience to sit and listen to it, is a huge challenge.

I recommend you give it a try on your next show. It can add some humor, and an edge, that any high school show could use. But remember, folks, that’s just my opinion.

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