Just For TV Teachers

This will be the 20th year of “HTV Magazine” at Hillcrest. Our show is o-l-d. Good thing the kids creating it are still teenagers since the show has always been billed as “by teens, for teens.” Their teacher has not stayed 32, which he was when this whole TV thing started at the school on the Hill.

I don’t want to get too nostalgic as we begin school and start planning our first HTV of the year. Heck, my room, currently undergoing major renovations, is such a mess it will be three or four weeks before we really settle into our new digs.

So now I think I’ll do something I haven’t done in forever…a top ten. Today’s category: The Top Ten Biggest Changes During HTV’s First 20 Years.

10. Microphones. We bought our first one thanks to a car wash in 1989. Now we’ve got a bunch of them. That first one was used in the field, then we’d prop it up on a table so it would pick up our two anchors’ voices when we shot wrap-arounds each month. Nobody told us you could use lav mics, and get a cheap splitter at Radio Shack so both anchors could be heard. What a concept.

9. The name of our show. Sort of. We called it “Hillcrest Television Magazine” the first five or six shows, but that was way too many syllables. So we cut it to “HTV Magazine.”

8. Our sets. Not that they are (or ever were) special, but we found our comfort zone when we got away from sitting at an anchor table or desk, and stopped trying to look so formal, like the “suits” on local newscasts. I think our casual approach on set has led to better, more conversational writing. I know, that sounds weird, but the look of the show fits the style and sound of the show. Or is it the other around?

7. Story length. We used to do these painfully long, tedious lead stories. I’m talking six minutes each! It took us maybe three or four years to start understanding that less is more, and now we rarely go over three minutes, even on our monthly “HTV Special Assignment.”

6. Overall pacing. In addition to the story lengths, the pacing of the show in general is better, and much more teen-friendly. It’s still one of the things I see a lot of high school shows struggle with–how to keep things moving while remaining informative.

5. The show openings. They have come so far since the old days. The biggest advancement was made possible by non-linear editing, and by some of our smart HTV alums, who have consistently been there for us when we wanted to spice up our show’s first 45 seconds.

4. The “Chatroom.” It’s a segment we added about five years ago, and it’s such a great exercise for the kids who produce it. It’s our nat-sound, conversation piece. No narration, no reporter seen or heard. They are often memorable, and they provide a nice, short feature we can count on each month.

3. Lighting. We use it better than we used to. I do a lousy job teaching lighting, and it’s always trial-and-error when we put our sets together each month. Soon, when the room renovations are completed, we’ll have a light grid for the first time, and maybe we’ll take another step forward. Maybe.

2. Prior review. We have been under it for about seven years, but so far, we have not been censored, although prior review is of course a form of censorship. The best way to handle it? Ignore it. Do the show the way you want to do, submit it, and let the chips fall. Like I said, our district formalized the review of student productions after a spat we got into with the superintendent in October of ‘01. To the district’s credit, they have not changed our show since the policy went into effect. As a teacher, the best thing I can do is never let the review process impact my kids. So far, so good. Of course, a track record over the course of 20 years helps. Far too many scholastic productions nationally suffer constant interference by administrators.

1. We are not alone. That’s the biggest change on the HTV landscape. Thousands of schools have their own TV shows now. When we started in the fall of 1989, that was not the case. There are video classes everywhere, and so many students are getting a chance to produce great content for their schools and communities. It makes us better because those around us are better. Meanwhile, we are happy to be one of the nation’s oldest student-produced broadcasts.

A final observation: One thing has NOT changed since we started this little newsmagazine experiment. We’re always looking for a good story. That resumes this fall as we sharpen our news radar, and start searching for more great characters with great stories to tell. See you on channel 25 here in Springfield, MO, or on the HTV website.

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I have made my mind up about this. That whining you will soon be hearing will probably be from my HTV staffers when they learn the news. This year, they will all be filing “Backpack” reports for our website on a regular basis.

This means each week, one of our 18 advanced broadcast journalism staff members will find, shoot, write and edit a story alone, with no assistance from classmates. Why? Because they can and should. The trend, like it or not, is for professionals to do stories on their own, so if it’s good enough for the folks in major TV markets, it’s good enough for those of us a little further down the journalistic food chain.

Kids in my class need more to do, not less, anyway. With a monthly newsmagazine, there is too much down time between shows. That week after a show wraps is particularly “leisurely,” if you get my drift. So now we’ll be in a non-stop production mode.

My plan is to add this little assignment to the course syllabus, publish a schedule of a year’s worth of deadlines for the “backpack” reports on the first day of school, then sit back and enjoy the results. I have a feeling this will be more painful for some (the technology-challenged, and the shy) than others (those extraverts who have some decent camera skills should excel).

Do I know exactly what kind of stories we’ll file? Not yet. The kids will determine that. We will spend some time focusing the project, but I am guessing it will include a lot of coverage of events and topics we do not budget time for on our cable magazine show. I am only demanding 75-second pieces. Short and to the point is fine.

I had attendees at our recent “Camp STN” for returning teachers do a similar assignment, and after some gnashing of teeth, they did a great job. So if it’s good enough for teachers, then it’s good enough for the teens. Stay tuned to www.htvmagazine.com this fall and we’ll see how it goes.

One final note about journalists flying solo. Les Rose, who taught at the aforementioned “Returners Camp” for us told me news directors are finding out that photographers are sometimes better at backpack reporting that reporters. That makes sense. Photogs are usually all about visual storytelling, without the clutter of a wordy voice track, or the obligatory reporter presence that can add little more than face-time to a package. It will be interesting to see who steps up the best with this new, solo assignment. You can decide for yourself when we start posting the stories around mid-September.

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The seventh annual “Camp STN” for students wrapped about 24 hours ago. We moved the camp from our home turf, Hillcrest High School in Springfield, MO, where summer renovations continue, to the incredible Lee’s Summit West High School, which sits just outside Kansas City. Before I continue, a huge “THANKS” to teacher Karrie Smythia, who agreed to host this year’s camp at West. She went out of her way to open up her classroom, control room, studio and edit bays so we could work with 34 teens from across the country. I am happy to report the biggest spill of the week was made by one of her own students, thus reducing my guilt over the Sprite puddle on the carpet in the library. (Try some club soda, by the way)

Everytime we have a kids camp, it is always a challenge to establish rapport and trust in a very short amount of time with teens from diverse backgrounds, from very different broadcast programs, and each with their own perspective on what is good, what is right, and what is important in the world of scholastic video production.

I discovered some comforting, and troubling tendencies in the 2008 student group. I share these insights from the perspective of a 25-year veteran educator, the last 19 spent as a broadcast journalism teacher (with some English and print journalism thrown in now and then). Oh yeah, I was also a head baseball coach for ten years.

On a positive note, I watched many kids take tons of notes, heard them ask good questions, and soak up everything they could during the week.

On a negative note, I saw some kids constantly fuss with their cell phones while speakers were presenting great information, things they had prepared especially for the camp. If it wasn’t a cell phone, it was earphones from an iPod or some such device.

On a positive note, there were new friendships made, and many acts of kindness and unselfishness throughout the week that made us all feel good about young people.

On a negative note, we had a few who seemed to be at camp to prove how much smarter they were than the other campers, the staff, and the guest speakers. What a waste of their time and ours. It makes me wonder if they are so programmed by their own teachers to think that “everything we do is the only way to do it,” so they can’t accept new ideas or approaches. I would understand it, I suppose, if their work at camp had been awe-inspiring. I think they should have taken the leap of faith we ask teachers to take when they attend camp, and just give our approaches a chance to work. Again, most did, but a few didn’t.

On a positive note, a number of kids told us after camp that they could not wait to get home and change some things with their own shows, and make them better than ever. I had six different kids ask if they could come back in 2009. They were pumped, and that made us all feel good about the effort. There were tons of goodbye hugs, photos, and exhanges of e-mail addresses and phone numbers (cell phones, of course).

On a negative note, it is pretty dumb to honestly report things that maybe don’t reflect well on the camp experience. But we have nothing to hide, and I hate “spin.” Camp is like school. Some kids work hard, listen, and are there for the right reasons. Others are intent to play, ignore, and show off for others. Again, like school.

For teachers who want to send kids in the future, I hope your students come with an open mind, and a thirst for knowledge and new educational experiences designed to make them better, and prepare them to be leaders back at home. That’s what camp does for most of the ones who attend.

For the others, camp might be viewed as a pretty expensive vacation. Investing money for registration is one thing. Investing your time and effort in the camp, and all it offers, is something quite different.

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