Have you been receiving emails from Mr. Martin of a video from the News Club? That would be the club I started called the Toll Gate News Channel. At the beginning of this year, I wanted to bring weekly news to students every week, and entertain them while I’m at it. I wanted people to be excited to see new episodes. I went to Mr. Mercier, hoping for an advisor. I was part of his Film Club in previous years. When this club started, I didn’t really have a solid idea on what an episode would look like, and definitely didn’t know how long it would take to make them. I made posters advertising the club, hoping to bring in people interested.
The concept of the club was simple. Update students every week about what’s going on in the school. I personally often found myself not knowing when new clubs were starting, when volleyball games were, or when there was going to be an assembly on a random Thursday. The idea was to inform students when things like this were happening. I wanted fun little weekly segments, comedy crammed in every episode. I wanted students to be able to work on every aspect, such as writing, recording, editing, the whole process.
At our first meeting, not many people showed up. It was mostly just the people I personally advertised the club to, my friends. They were not really sold on the idea, but joined to support me. After a couple of sessions just discussing what the episodes would be like, we started working on an episode. Our first episode, which can be found on the club’s Instagram, was a fictionalized news episode with satirical stories, even down to the date. “Decembruary 67th.” As time went on with the club meeting regularly, when we started trying to write actual episodes, more and more people stopped showing up to meetings. They lost interest. We made a couple more sample runs, but we were worried that this wasn’t going to go anywhere. It was hard enough to make an episode, never mind within one week.
When the second semester rolled around and we still didn’t have a real episode out, we knew something had to change. We changed our format. Episodes were made shorter, with fewer segments for topics that could be made into a sentence. We made it so that there’s one main topic that we’ll cover, with a handful of mini stories that we cover briefly. Once we had a full plan, with the few members we had left, we made an episode in a week and put it out. The next two weeks were winter break and the blizzard. The week after that we covered the blizzard. People started to tune in thanks to Mr. Martin sharing episodes via email. People started coming up to us asking to join the club.
Since I already know how my peers in the club feel about what we’ve done with it so far, I sought an outside perspective.
I asked Mrs. May,
“What do you think of the Toll Gate News Channel as an outside observer?”
“I think it’s interesting,” she replied. “I think it’s about time students bought into what’s going on and felt heard. It gives everyone a voice, and I like how it’s more frequent compared to the Tribune. It’s more current.”
I also wanted to see what a peer would have to say.
I asked senior Sophia Mora the same question.
She said, “I like it. The news videos are funny, but still informative. They’re more accessible than the news articles, and they talk about a lot of different stuff in the videos.”
It finally felt like a success. We have been putting out episodes weekly for a few weeks now, and I’m really happy with how they’re coming out. They’re even being shown on the Toll Gate website. Everyone gets a turn to anchor, edit, interview or write. The editing isn’t being taken as seriously, which is a good thing. Some comedy is what I imagined for this club. I want to make it interesting for students, which I think it is. I deeply appreciate Mr. Mercier’s help in all of this, along with my fellow student members who take the time out of their week to work on these episodes. I think all of this goes to show that if any students have an idea that they believe could better the school, they should go for it. With enough passion, I fully believe that any unique idea could make an impact on this school. I’m really proud of The Toll Gate New Channel’s first few weeks.
