By Kordell Booth

And we’re live in 5…4…3…2…1–good morning McCaskey campus! This is the WMCC Tornado alert morning show. These are the words you hear coming from the TV screens in your teachers’ classrooms every morning when the Morning Show goes live to the entire campus. At the same time, your favorite clubs, sports, and classes are getting posted on social media every day. While this has become a routine part of life on campus, these things don’t just happen magically. The people who take the WMCC class, part of our media studies program, work very hard to make sure you get the best coverage and news of events around McCaskey. Though, some of the things they do behind the camera go unnoticed. 

“This is a work in progress and we’re still trying to figure out how to represent everybody.” That’s what WMCC student Lily Ferguson had to say about how the work of WMCC feels behind the scenes. Lily Ferguson is a senior who has been working with WMCC for two school years and has been taking media classes for 4 years and has made a huge impact on the program as a whole. However, the person she says has made the biggest impact on her has been Ms. Nolt. Lily told me, “Without Ms. Nolt, we would not be anywhere close to where we are today.” She is absolutely right. Ms. Nolt is one of the two media teachers who makes the media program run smoothly. She’s been teaching here for 15 years and to say she’s made an impact on WMCC is an understatement. Her influence on students gives them inspiration and helps them find their passion through media. Her style of teaching gives students structure and the basic knowledge of media, while also giving them creativity and freedom to express themselves through their projects and reporting.

Another reason the media studies program has been so successful is because of Mr. Houseman. He joined the media studies team last school year and has made his impact felt. He is another reason that the show has improved, especially since he started teaching the Intro to Media class last year. He told me, “It’s my job for people to get interested in the business,” and the numbers show that he’s been successful in that regard. Ms. Nolt’s class for Media 1 has almost doubled the students that she had last year and that is because of the success that Mr. Houseman has been teaching this intro class. 

A common misconception that some students have about WMCC is that “it’s easy” or “that everyone can do it.” According to Mr. Houseman, people just assume “WMCC is just the morning show.”  But students in media studies classes do a lot more than that. For example they run the McCaskey social media pages including Instagram, X, and Facebook, while also running the new McCaskey athletics social media page, while also going around to film content for the morning show. 

This is no easy task, since they only have nine students this year, and they still have the same production output, if not more, including productions on social media, than last year. The show is nothing short of impressive. Mr. Houseman even said “They’re putting out the content of legitimately twenty to twenty five people. So, WMCC is successful because you all make it successful.” 

WMCC is important to McCaskey for a variety of reasons, like contributing to the positive image McCaskey wants to display while also just showing how awesome and cool the school is and all the opportunities it has to offer. Ms. Nolt said it best when she said, “WMCC is so unique because we have the privilege of spotlighting all of the incredible opportunities that happen at McCaskey every single day. And, whenever we’re able to shine a light on something new, our community is able to see it and learn more about how they can get involved.”

Another thing students know is that WMCC is just one elective out of the many at McCaskey. Junior Keira Koser Martin realizes this by saying, “A student in a different elective isn’t going to think that we are the most important, and it depends on the student because another student could have a different elective that makes them want to come to school everyday.” Even though the WMCC team likes to stay humble and work primarily behind the scenes, they are one of the big reasons that students know about all the other electives and classes and clubs. 

This fact highlights the importance of journalism and media in the first place: high quality information and news opens doors for us to live well and pursue our own goals and interests. Without quality information, we’d all be in the dark. So, the next time you see a WMCC student shooting footage, taking photos, or writing a script, make sure to thank them for all the hard work that they do to ensure we know what’s going on in our school community.