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Senior Lydia Horton works on a page of the Texas High yearbook. While yearbook works all year to complete their book, newspaper must consistently put out stories each week.
What’s the scoop?
Welcome to Room 50B
Keys hurriedly click, but the room also swells with laughter. Deadlines are met, but life long bonds are still made. The final product was edited to perfection, but the pride within made everything worth it.
Inside the walls of Room 50B, there is always much going on with both newspaper and yearbook having to work simultaneously in one room. The wrangler of it all is the always upbeat and happy to help Sara Vaughn.
“My favorite thing about this position is the people because I think it’s really fun to see people work hard and actually care about stuff,” Vaughn said. “In this role, I’m not supposed to be the one doing things. I’m just supposed to oversee. It’s really cool to see teenagers take on such a big role.”
There is always more to do while creating one book to encapsulate a whole year or constantly spitting out the latest news, hottest topics and strongest opinions into the student body. Along with learning time management through constantly being busy, there are many more life lessons to learn in 50B.
“This class gives you a lot of real life communication skills: going out and talking to people you don’t know, professional communication, professional emails, being self sufficient and self motivated to get your stuff done on time,” Vaughn said. “There is a lot of freedom, so you have to learn how to adapt to that.”
Although newspaper and yearbook co-exist within the same walls, they are very different. While yearbook has one focus all year long, newspaper has many smaller goals to meet throughout the year, such as each student covering at least three stories per six weeks.
“I would say the newspaper is very fast paced, but self paced, and you get to work on stuff you care about,” junior Culture Editor Gracie Tucker said. “You get to be creative and share your ideas with other people. Plus, sometimes, you get to go on fun trips.”
Newspaper has five categories for online: news, sports, feature, culture and opinion. Then, for the print newspaper, which comes every six weeks, there are other categories like the in-depth, editorial and community in addition to the five others. Each person on newspaper staff can choose what they want to cover as long as they are dedicated to putting their best work out there for readers.
“I like writing opinion pieces the most because I am very opinionated,” junior staff writer Blaise Larry-Cox said. “I feel like it’s a good place where I can voice my views.”
While newspaper has to split its focus between online, print and even podcasts, yearbook has one main purpose for the whole year.
“Our goal is to create a very diverse and fun looking yearbook to wrap up everything that goes on throughout the year,” senior Advertising Manager Olivia Turner said. “It’s so fun to talk to all the different people throughout our school and learn all the hobbies and fun things that they do in our diverse school.”
In order for the yearbook to be as inclusive and chic as it is, yearbook writers have to always be throwing out new, innovative ideas. They have 272 pages that have to be filled with the best that Texas High has to offer, which is found right here within the student body.
“One of the main ways we come up with ideas for spread coverage is we’ll have everyone write down everything they can think of that happened in a month,” senior Editor In Chief Lydia Horton said. “We try to do that before the month starts and think of things that are coming up, or at the end of the month, we can go back and choose content based on what pictures we have.”
Yearbook’s main concern is making everyone feel seen, so they consider this while picking what to fill the pages with.
“Instead of covering the same person over and over again, we cover lots of different people once or twice,” Horton said. “Sometimes, we’ll pick content for spreads based on what will allow us to cover a larger variety of people.”
Whichever branch of journalism sounds the most intriguing, anyone can find a place to fit in inside Room 50B.
“I would encourage anyone to join yearbook or newspaper because there is definitely a spot for everyone. I remember when I joined, and everyone was so sweet,” junior News/Feature Editor Liberty Cowan said. “If anyone was concerned about the extra workload, then they shouldn’t worry because it is not that much extra work than the regular workload.”