Greetings from the news desk; this is Mr. Janes. I’m a second-year teacher at Hay Springs High School but this is my first year teaching journalism here. I previously taught journalism in South Dakota, Wyoming and Kansas. Before becoming a teacher, I wrote for the Joliet Herald Newspaper in Joliet, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago and my home town. My degree is in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Needless to say, I love teaching journalism.

I have spent the first three weeks of school teaching the new journalism students about the basics of journalism. The “Ws and H” questions to ask are: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? These are critical when reporting so as to get all the facts and get them straight. Then there is the “Inverted Pyramid” of writing – it is the ordering of the important details in the article. Writing headlines and story “hooks” draw in a reader but if the story isn’t well written itself, the reader can easily be lost. So we have worked hard and hope the results will be in our words.

Speaking of which, the Journalism class students are the writers for the articles reported by the Video Production students in the weekly HSTV Newscast. Have you seen the inaugural video? Check it out right here on HSHawks.com or bookmark and return to our HSTV Channel at www.vimeo.com/hstv1 for all the newscasts this year.

In addition to regular “newsy” stuff, the Journalism class is currently deciding how to proceed with the new yearbook. With a school photographer on the horizon, we are sure to up our game visually, not to mention capitalize on our excellent writing skills to publish a great yearbook. There are some soon-to-come updates regarding the yearbook, but our goals always will be creating a high-quality product while learning skills valuable for a lifetime in the progress.

We are not done yet, but we don’t yet want to play our entire hand so… stay tuned for exciting changes!