Having been involved with the PBS Student Reporting Labs for the last year as a junior, it was a real treat to be able to tour the KLRU studio and view one of the tapings for Overheard with Evan Smith with Jim Lehrer as the guest. It was only a year ago when my teacher was showing me a video clip of Mr. Lehrer addressing me and my classmates about the journey we were about to take working with the PBS NewsHour Extra website. Having only seen a high school media studio it was mind blowing to walk around the maze of KLRU’s office to see studios the size of our classroom and a control board that looked like something off of a spaceship. It was not only the size that was impressive, but the staff of KLRU is truly amazing; being able to watch them in their element was enjoyable and enlightening. (See photos from the trip on K-AHS’s Flickr page)

The taping was my favorite part, listening to Jim Lehrer crack jokes about all of the politicians he’s interviewed was the highlight of my day. My parents were also jealous that I got to sit in on such an influential political figurehead which made the gloating that much more enjoyable. It was a learning experience as well. Being the youngest crowd there Overheard gave insight to the class about the inner workings of political interviews, a process that had never been explained to us.

Before the taping, Erika Aguilar gave us a tour of the KUT studio and showed us where they record bands, interviews, and eat bagels! (morning story meeting table). It felt really cool that we also had a story meeting table and did the same thing they did, bouncing ideas off each other as a team to get the best ideas on what to put on air.

The Austin Highs Media team is so lucky to have been able to work so closely with our mentors, KLRU’s Lynn Boswell and KUT’s Erika Aguilar with the Student Reporting Labs to create our own NewsHour Reports. The experience last year, producing our news stories, was very difficult, but well worth the stress. That year taught me how to be a serious journalism and media student and gave a voice to my classmates and I, a group of individuals whose point of view often gets over looked. That experience gave us a chance to see what it means to be a journalist, and to see all the hard work that goes into finding a story that is worth creating.

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 The new year had started and along with the regular excitement of summer and graduation, because it was spring semester, there was also the excitement of our second chance to make a PBS News Package. Last semester was like a practice run and this semester we knew what we were doing and how to do it, all that was left was making the best package possible. The entire class switched groups and we were ready to brainstorm. My group consisted of Hannah Young, Eli Smith, and I, Sam King. 

If you read my last blog you might remember that my group strived to uncover some deep conspiracy about the government but the premise of what ever story we could come up with was all biased, which breaks almost every ethic code in journalism. So we made a 180 degree turn and wrote about charity. Well this semester we really got a chance to take a bite out of scandal as all the public schools in Texas were having budget cuts. I watched different news programs, all which gave possible plans we as Texans could do to climb out of this deficit. The one thing I couldn't find was, what happened to all that money! I started to wonder how did we lose it, and why did we not only as Texans but as Americans, let this happen, and how long had we been losing this money before we really started to notice? With the help of our mentors Lynn and Erica we got straight to business investigating budgets for the school board the last few months, writing senators and representatives, and calling other journalists who had done similar stories. As expected there were some set backs. Senators never got back to us, the state comptroller's assistant wouldn't let us even talk to the comptroller, Susan Combs, and everyones schedules were conflicting. It seemed as if everyone we contacted either had the answers but wouldn't tell us or didn't know but were glad to sit down with us for an interview. We had to act quick before the trail went cold. One day, our group was approached by Lynn who came to ask how she could help and we told her our problems. She said she knew a very intelligent man who could help by the name of Ross Ramsey, and that he would be a great start for finding sources and coming up with ideas. We bit, and called Ross. He ended up being very knowledgeable on the subject and we were left with an interview almost entirely dictated by Ross, every journalists dream. Ramsey left us with some more connections to look into, some of which Lynn already knew and with that we were back in the chase for the truth.

Meanwhile the human interest aspect of the story was getting closer to home then I was planning. The Varsity K-AHS team was in the process of writing a script for a movie. The script called for a trip to Marfa Texas. I was in a van with chaperone Carmen Williams, the school librarian. It was at least a seven hour drive to Marfa and through lengthy personal discussion she quickly was less of a chaperone and more of a friend. Through all the laughs and fun times I had forgotten my story at hand. One third of all school Librarians in the AISD district were getting cut. It was easy to write a story about a tragedy when it had no effect on me. But now I was starting to understand exactly why this budget cut story was so big in our media. Mrs. Williams literally had done nothing wrong, she has worked at the school for over a decade and has a family with children. In short, she is awesome. None of that mattered, not even her contract mattered. Because of our decisions in this state, reckless mistakes and ignorance, people who had done nothing wrong were getting fired and the sad thing is people continue to not care because it doesn't effect them personally. A bad habit that will only make problems like this budget deficit more common. I now had a more personal reason to complete this story rather than just for a letter grade.

Me and Mrs. Williams at K-AHS awards dinner

 
I'm not going to tell you everything that is in this package because it would be redundant but I will tell you what experience we learned. Last semester all the sources were found by ourselves or looked up by our mentors. This semester all our sources were referred to us by our mentors. Gil always told us that this business of film and journalism is all about connections but now we have a greater breadth of exactly what he means. If we did not have the connections of our mentors and all those extended by them we would have gotten no where like trying to throw ice cubes at the sun. Make new friends, keep the old, and don't burn any bridges, don't write a story you don't care about because if you don't care no one else will.

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At the begining of the last Six weeks of the 2010 fall semester, The Advanced A/V Production Class at Austin high was blessed with an oportunity that is for most student journalists, a once in a life time chance... to get a package onto the PBS News Hour program. Gil introduced us to his friends Lynn Boswell  and Erica Aguillar who are both professional journalists and set the expectations for the coming year. We would be working with The PBS NewsHour to make packages. So Gil split the class into groups, which we picked ourselves, from which we were to make a package concerning either immigration or the economy, but with a student's perspective.

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The crew went on a field trip to the Hilton to talk to other PBS affiliates about our program and to see if they were interested in starting a student reporting lab in their town. Catalina unknowingly even pitched our program to the President of PBS! We had a great day which culminated with lunch at PF Changs!

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PBS visited the AHS student reporting lab to get feedback on how things are going. They took some video and produced this video about the AHS team.

http://www.studentreportinglabs.com/article/austin-high-school

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Lynn Boswell is one our mentors and produces Texas Monthly Talks with Evan Smith. She invited the group to visit the set and go behind the scenes!

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