 and this is in the studio produced by Davis Media Access. If you want to know more about Davis Media Access, you can go to dctv.davismedia.org or you can go on to channel 15 on cable. Today I'm joined by the Davis Blue Devil Hub and we have two staff members and why don't you introduce yourselves to start and tell me how you got involved in the hub and your position at the hub. Alright, well I'm Riley Donahue and I'm the web multimedia editor-in-chief and I got started with the hub when some of the past hub students came to my English class as a freshman and explained the whole program and actually saw one of the girls who presented at the gym later that night and I talked to her about it. She really sold me on it and so... So do you like going to classes, freshman classes to do that as well because that was your experience? Do you ever do that? I have done it. It was actually really fun. Last year we got to go to all the junior high schools and recruit some people and it was great. Alright. My name's Thomas Alwide. I'm the newspaper editor-in-chief and my neighbor actually was a former copy editor at the hub I think for two years and he had been selling me on it since probably like the seventh grade and so when it came time to kind of select what classes or like the electives, I said, you know what, why not? And follow Big Gary's advice and just kind of take the class and it's really paid off. Shout out. Well, so you guys have been doing this since sophomore year. You guys took journalism sophomore year. Yeah. And so are you guys both seniors now? Yeah. Alright, do you guys know how long the print version of the hub has been going on? Well, you can actually go to the DHS library and you can see like print like editions of the hub since like the early 20th century like before like World War II. Like I think there's one from like 1919 or like right around in that era and the website's been like... It's been about five years. Yeah. It's fairly recent. We're still kind of working with it and tweaking things, you know, probably some people are tweaking it as we speak. Yeah. But yeah, I mean it can only get better. I mean the hub's been in existence for 80 years and you know websites are just a really recent thing. Yeah, why don't we look at the website because it looks very nice. There are lots of graphics on there. Thanks. And it's nice. And you guys are really into social media too, right? You have Instagram. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's my territory. The website has really kind of taken off since like it was started and like we get, I mean now up to like thousands of views per day and we get like Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and all kinds of different social media things. Yeah, I think that really helps, you know. And how do you guys deal with controversial stories like when something happens it's kind of, you guys both write, right? So how do you, what's the procedure for that when something happens? Well, I can speak from personal experience last year. There's the Julie Crawford and Nancy Peterson situation and I kind of followed that from where it started and all the way to where it finished. And there isn't really a policy. It's just everyone's, when there's a story like that you just kind of got to go out and do your job to the best of your ability given off what people are gonna say because you know in a situation like that that's a personal issue, personnel issue, administrations it's not in their place to say what happened or whatever. So, you know, you just kind of kind of really critically think about, you know what lines up where and just report the facts so that people know what's happening. Yeah, so you do the stories and then you, how do you do that in class? When you start out in class, do you talk to your teacher, Ms. Wilkerson and or do you guys just kind of report based on what you know and what you know you're allowed to do? Does she give you freedom? Yeah, I mean, she gives us a fair amount of freedom. I mean, as far as like rights for student journalists go California has it pretty good. We have a lot of rights as students who just can't like disrupt the flow of school, I think. But we have written controversial stories that people have gotten angry about and have, you know, given us pushback but we have like, I don't know we always come up with them at the beginning of the month and Ms. Wilkerson, you know weighs in on what she thinks would be good and what we should be careful about and I know we have the Student Press Law Center at our disposal, which you can like call up and ask like law questions that we couldn't ask you know, a staff member of the school, so that's nice. But yeah, we definitely do controversial stories sometimes if people get angry. So do you guys put a lot of time outside of school into this? I think the website, they're constantly on deadline because media is all about deadlines. You know, you got to get the story up especially with social media websites. You just got to get it up really quick. So websites doing their thing all the time. Print, we're actually putting out a paper next week and that usually takes three to four days. We'll be in class probably a total of about like 15 hours in that one week that we're putting out the paper just so designing everything, laying it out, getting the photos in, putting in the graphics and designing it all so that it looks good and it's something that the Davis High community wants to read. Nice. So do you guys have your own personal favor aspects of it or do you stick to one thing? Do you guys take photos or make videos or how does that go? I can't speak for the entirety of the hub but myself and I'm sure Thomas too would really like to do some, like do a little bit of everything and take some videos and write some stories and take some photos and maybe design something and for me personally, I really love the media aspect of it and I love making videos and I love taking photos and putting it all together and making it look good which is why I got involved with the website. Yeah and I think our advisor, Kelly Wolkerson, she's done a really good job with the program and you can really focus on one aspect but in journalism today as a career field you can't just be anymore, you can't just be a good writer or a good photographer or a good videographer anymore. You would have to be good at everything so the way she structures the classes that you have to do a couple articles, take some photos, do some videos that we're all kind of equipped with that skillset to not just, I mean doing journalism but there's a lot more to learn from working on the paper than just these journalistic skills. Yeah. Do either of you think you'll pursue journalism in the future because of the hub? I mean I would probably get into it for maybe a little bit less the writing but yeah journalism is such a broad, like Thomas said, it's such a broad field these days that you can be a journalist and not just sit down and write and not go to things to write on a pad of paper, you can go and you can take photos, you can go anywhere in the world where there's newsworthy things happening and take photos and that can be your whole job or you can go and our advisor, Douglas Wilkerson, her husband Vince, Vince Stirlia works for Dateline and he goes around and he films things and he went to, we go to like Ghana recently for like the Nelson Mandela. Yeah, South Africa. Yeah, South Africa. And he does the like video and stuff and so I can see myself getting into something like that. Yeah, you got a head start. I mean a lot of the electives at DHS they're not really something like this where you have a lot of responsibility, a lot of people choose something easy for you to take but this, you're taking it all three years of high school and I think that's really cool that you got involved. Is there like, are there tight bonds between you and people in the hub? I hear a lot of people saying it's their favorite class. Yeah, I would say most people, I have some pretty close friends in hub and the class that came in this year's senior class, a lot of those people I've known since like first grade or junior high, I met Riley in junior high. So we've all been kind of together since Davis is such a small community and it's a pretty big high school but being able to take journalism and see people and reconnect with people I think it's a pretty cool thing. Yeah. So do your stories generally focus on campus or do you ever talk about stories like in Davis in general or what people are doing in Davis? Yeah, we try. I mean, our main focus is to cover the happenings in the Davis High School community but that also applies to things that happening outside the school campus and outside school grounds still greatly affect students at Davis High School and so we try and cover things like, I don't know, what have we done recently that's been outside of school. Like I'm sure that what we did was like. Right now, there's the North Davis bomb threat. I think we've got a couple of people covering that right now as we speak. We've done some people, there's a DHS teacher who's stuck in Boston running the, he wasn't stuck in Boston but he was running the Boston Marathon when the bombings happened. So we got in touch with him. So when we do stories like that it's really about taking a broader angle about a broader news story and kind of localizing it to what's happening at DHS. So that's kind of the idea because if you look at it in terms of a website if you're writing a story about the Boston Marathon and you write something about those bombings I mean people are probably gonna turn to the New York Times or the Boston Globe before they turn to the Hub which is the student run newspaper at Davis High. So yeah, but we do a lot of different stuff, sports I mean whatever, mostly but I would say it's mostly campus. Yeah or something that ties into the campus somehow. So do you ever refer to like Davis Enterprise or anything to see how you can take a more professional viewpoint or something or maybe get ideas or is there generally things to report? Well I'm kind of in like the middle cause our teacher likes to compete with the Davis Enterprise to get things up before they do and I also work for the Davis Enterprise so it's kind of like a struggle but yeah I mean we try and cover the same things they do and try and localize them more in the high school. I mean in some aspects we have an advantage so for example when a coach steps down the sports writers at the Davis Enterprise or like my bosses they don't necessarily have the access to the students like I do or the players who are just at school and I can walk by them in the hall say hey what do you think about this and grab a quote and then throw it in an article that I'm writing so. Yeah do you guys talk to your friends a lot about it and ask them for quotes for interviews or ask them their perspective? Yes and no I mean we try and get people that are like relevant to the story and so if we have people that you know say one of my friends is on you know the football team and so I want to ask him like how the game went like I would ask him about it but I wouldn't you know go ask my friend in the drama department how you know how he thought the last baseball game went or like you know just like it's nice being able to interview people that you know and stuff but like also like their involvement in whatever story it is is I mean important you know. Davis is really tight knit so a lot of the times you've grown up with these people and so it's easy. How is your dynamic with your advisor it's Ms. Wilkerson right. You guys have been with her for a while and what does she kind of take you under her wing in a way. I think by the time we're seniors where she kind of lets us go and to do whatever but she as an advisor I think her role is to part of her role is to kind of oversee everything but the other part is to kind of push us to do some like big projects. I think Riley and I actually have a bigger project that'll be coming on the way in the next couple months and so she tries to generate those ideas and foster them as we kind of create I mean their multimedia article about whatever that big story is but I think her big role is really overseeing what's happening with the hub but at the same time I think it's a testament to her to how successful the program has been in the last couple years and she's really fostered she's really built the program from the ground up and that starts with journalism one where she oversees that class and teaches that class and he's done a really great job of teaching us I mean if we didn't have her we wouldn't be prepared for the big project that we're gonna put out and other kids too are doing big articles and big videos and whatnot too. That's really what separates us I think from a lot of newspapers around the country is that we have this like intro class like journalism one where she teaches like you know basics and writing photography, videography, like radio pieces and stuff like that and like in a lot of schools you know I mean even like Da Vinci they know that they're newspaper you just get right into the newspaper and you know in that like I mean it's definitely like there's a higher quality of things when you take a class first and like learn like the basics of everything and you get this like education on what makes you know good journalism good and so that really helped the program a lot I think. Yeah and because of things like that the programs has been recognized right? How so? We just went to, we actually in November we all went out to Washington D.C. for a national convention and we spent some time it's I think they're like what 6,000 kids or something about that. Yeah, there's a lot of people there. From around the country I mean I have some friends who do journalism from around the country so it's all nice to see them but I think in the past couple years we received a pacemaker award for the newspaper and the website so that's recognized as some of the one of the top 40, no top 20 newspapers or websites in the country and then I think we were also a pacemaker finalist which means top 40 but not, we didn't win a pacemaker. At D.C. we were nominated for either a website or a newspaper but you know we got some awards myself and another staff member we wrote a story that won like fourth place for like new story of the year so. Wow, what a story. We wrote a story about college summer programs and how they don't really impact college admissions at all so. Oh, that's so cool that you were, you're able to put this stuff on college applications too and job applications in the future. Yeah, so social media really helps get attention, right? Like I know I like the hub on Facebook and why don't we look at that. So I see a lot of the articles they're right away they're up it seems like and there are a lot of people involved in the hub, right? Yeah. There are 20 class members there are. Our biggest staff and I think a pretty long time I think we have. Never, it's pretty big. I think it's almost 50 so we have a bunch of photographers, a bunch of graphic artists. Yeah. And then all our writers too I think we have about 26 staff members so which split time between a website and a newspaper. Yeah, really I think the social media has impacted it because you're everywhere and so people are taking journalism one and so you know you're gonna have that flow of students coming in even when you're gone and you guys probably like the page so you'll see it when you're in college and stuff too. So that'll be nice. Yeah, we have a lot of even journalism one writers. I think there's almost like a hundred kids between these two classes that are being groomed to get into the hub next year if they choose to follow through with that. But yeah the program has definitely grown a lot I mean since we've been there especially but just in general in the last few years. Yeah and you referenced you know when we like the page we'll see it in college. We have a number of like old editors and stuff they all like we actually just yesterday we had last year's editor in chief come back and say hi so you know it's we're like kind of like a family in which you know everyone comes back and everyone's happy to see each other when they come back from college so it's really cool in that aspect. That's so nice. So you say that people are going to be competing or maybe not competing but like trying to pursue the hub next year from journalism one. So how does that work? Do you have to apply to be part of the hub? You don't have to apply to be in the hub but if you want an editor position then you need to come in like every year we have the editors in chief get together and as long as as well as Ms. Wilkerson and choose the next year's editors and most of the editors in chief are seniors. I don't know if there's ever been any junior editor in chief. So it's like people that are going to be gone the next year and they get together and they choose the upcoming seniors for positions and then juniors also get the editor positions maybe not editor in chief but yeah so everyone chooses for and they like apply for higher positions but anyone can be like a reporter. As long as you've taken journalism one. Yeah yeah unless you're a photographer you can come in and like take photos without the class. So for the future of the hub you see it what do you see? After you're gone sad to think about. I don't know I don't know if it's necessarily sad to think about because I think we're both pretty excited to pursue bigger things in journalism but at the same time I think we were in a similar situation when we were sophomores when you know because this is a pretty big senior class and we've all done a lot together now we're all going to be graduating we're on our way out and so I think our job for since we are all preparing to go to college I think our job our primary job for the next you know three four months is to kind of prepare the juniors to you know step into those big leadership positions to take over because there's not going to be as many there may or may not be as many writers as there were this year. So you know just make sure they're prepared and have the skill sets to you know continue the success and continue you know building the website building the newspaper so that you know people can still consider till still continue to read and consume what we put out. Yeah so as for the print do you think that'll continue with like media rising do you think they'll continue to publish that do you publish the same information? No newspaper is more like we'll write bigger stories for newspaper like website we'll see well that's where you'll see the 350 word article about what happened at the basketball game last night or whatever but for print I don't see it going away anytime soon I mean I've heard some rumors that we may be changing to like a magazine format I have a couple friends who are the editor in chiefs of like news magazines where they print on glossy paper and can make it look all pretty but I don't think it'll go away in the near future just because it's always been such a big part of campus life I guess you could say I mean we've had it since the 1920s and I don't see it really going away maybe when the enterprise goes away because that's where we print our paper but I don't see that happen anytime soon either All right so how much you say before print day do you spend a lot of time at school because I've heard that you spend a lot of time at school outside of the class is that true? Yeah and that's you Yeah so like a typical layout week on Sunday we're there for probably like three hours another six hours on Monday another four hours on Tuesday and then Wednesday we just have to stay until we finish it so you know I mean HUB is pretty like laid back for like the first couple weeks but once we get to layout week it's we just have to get it done and however much time that takes is however much time we need to put in So do either of you participate do you participate in the making of the newspaper Riley or is that just not? I write for the newspaper and I've done a graphic for the newspaper but I don't take any part in the actual piecing together or you know designing I mean sometimes I'll talk to Thomas or the other editor in chief for the print or Zoe and you know sell them if I have any ideas or anything but I don't actually like go to layout or you know spend time putting it all together So it seems like you guys each have your own positions but you end up doing a little bit of everything in a way because it's kind of a class thing right? Yeah everybody contributes I mean just because you're a website editor doesn't mean you can't work for you don't write articles for print just in the same way just because I work for print doesn't mean I do stuff for website So yeah that's part of the whole point of being in high school and taking a journalism class is to kind of get your feet in the water and do a little bit of everything All right so to wrap it up kind of do you want to talk about your favorite aspects or what the experience in general has been for being in the hub? Yeah I mean my experience in the hub I mean if anyone is watching and wondering if they want to take it or if you're just interested I mean I love the idea of getting to monitor the power of people a little bit and have my voice be heard you know as someone who cares about a lot of things and someone who is interested in a lot of things I like to you know educate people and also like hold people's feet to the fire about things and also I just really enjoy doing like art and I love writing I love making videos and taking photos and that's just fun and I enjoy it Yeah for me hub has just been it's been a pretty awesome three years in terms of like a journalism journey like you tell me three years ago that I would be considering probably doing journalism as a career I probably would have laughed at you Yeah same but you know three years and working with Miss Wilkerson and just kind of improving my skills like it's just opened so many different opportunities for me in terms of you know enterprise and doing all this other stuff outside of school and it's just really prepared me for what I want to do and the real world I guess you could say Yeah well that's great and I'm sure a lot of people watching are wanting to see something from the hub so we're going to show a short video of the whole soccer incident right Do you guys want to lead in with that? Yeah that was my video Alright so why don't we see that It's a little He stands at the behavior of this video but he also wanted to put the whole situation into context I think it's like a natural reaction for an athlete I mean obviously we're young and we're still learning about how to react when a call on a big game isn't going your way but you know we just got to learn from it and move on I think we shouldn't have maybe reacted so angrily but after years of hard work for your senior year to lose and a championship like that it's kind of tough for anyone In the wake of the confrontation the Blue Devils actions after the game were featured by area media outlets such as the Sacramento Bee and KCRA3 who labeled their actions as boorish and hostile Vega says that the behavior of the team exhibited is rare and knows that the incident won't define any member of this year's team And I think it's only those rare occasions where you know students and players at all different levels you know react that way it's rare and but it does happen and I think that it doesn't really define who we are like Mr. Lernton said it's not something we do every day day in and out it's not something we want to do you know it's not something we preach about we don't preach about yelling at the referee or taking it out on the ref or any official or any one at a superior level because we do have respect for them So did you produce that all by yourself or? Yeah that was something I did kind of independently I actually played JV soccer my sophomore year of high school so I know a lot of those guys and I was actually at that game when the whole incident happened and it was funny because I was just taking pictures and you know when you're taking pictures you just kind of get into a zone where you don't really know what's kind of going around around you you just kind of look for the good shots I actually took some of those photos that you saw in there and I didn't really realize the gravity of what had happened until like three days later when I just heard that all these guys had gotten suspended so I said well you know I'm close with a lot of these guys so I should take advantage of that and you know talk to them about it and I was fortunate enough that DJ and Tim and Kyle Fix they all gave me the were willing to talk to me and talk about the incident and I thought you know it went pretty well Yeah it was covered well, good job So do you guys want to wrap it up by promoting the website and all talking about social media? Yeah actually I'd love to if you're interested in reading our stories watching our videos seeing you know the best of Davis High School website journalism go to bluedevilhub.com and that is where we post all of our stories and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube as well all of our videos go there and we post links to all of our stories on Facebook so if you're interested in that All right well any last words for the viewers? Shout out to Vince Sterla my man, you inspire me All right well thank you so much for coming in we really enjoyed having you and hearing about The Hub this has been in the studio with Davis Media Access and tune in next week for more videos and more episodes