The Orb is our student-made newsmagazine. It is a 16 person staff, led by the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief leads the class each day, setting goals and expectations for content production. Class is also run by the Managing Editor. The Managing Editor sets the production schedule and assigns staffers to stories. Our other leadership includes the Copy Editor, who reads and edits stories before they are published, the Co-Creative Editors, who oversee and assist with design elements, the section editors, who keep staffers in their section on track and advise the stories in their section. The sections in the Orb Volume 35 are News, Feature, Voices, and Sports. Voices is a new section for Volume 35, focused on giving student voices a public platform. The staff also has an Off-the-Ground Editor, whose job is to assist in pitch meetings and help develop angles and sources for proposed topics, and an Editor of Fun, whose job is to keep morale high and plan fun activities for the group to destress. The leaders work together with the staffers to create a monthly issue, that is published digitally and distributed to the student body, as well as exclusively website based content.

The Sceptre Yearbook is the student-made yearbook produced every year. Currently, Yearbook has 21 staffers led by an advisor, a team of editors and the Editor-In-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief determines a theme for the yearbook and then guides the rest of the staffers to showcase the theme throughout the book. The other editors include the Section Editors, each one responsible for overlooking a specific section of the book, and Leads, who are responsible for helping and managing non-yearbook promotions or common skills, like the Website Lead and the Photography Lead. The sections of the yearbook include Academics, Sports, Student Life, Clubs and Organizations, and People. The yearbook also includes a Winter Supplement and a Spring Supplement, which was introduced in Volume 58, that allow for better coverage of activities later in the year.

Sports Media and Public Relations functions as an in-house media and public relations firm, providing with real-world, hands-on opportunities to apply journalism skills in a journalism-adjacent creative capacity as the exclusive media provider for Hamilton Southeastern Athletics Our 55-person staff is led by both the adviser and team leads.

Each day, the adviser starts class with an all-hands meeting before turning the time over to team leads who manage a daily meeting with their teams to discuss the day’s goals and expectations.

Day-to-day activities may include meeting and discussing with your selected sports PR team, taking and photos and/or videos for gameday, publishing content onto social media and into website galleries, and communicating professionally with coaches and team members of selected sports.

Most of the content created within this class takes place after school hours, through live event coverage. During this process, students oversee creating photo galleries, Instagram reels, and long-form video content. This is all posted within sections of the match, game, meet, or whatever sport is being covered. Within class periods, students spend their time editing and revising the content they gathered from past events, writing or editing game recaps, and planning proactively for the next event on their schedule.

When a project concludes, students deliver a case study to the class, showcasing their work and feedback from the client. After completing a campaign, students are left with valuable skills, including professional communication, journalistic writing, photography, videography, and editing. This class provides high schoolers a rare opportunity to immerse themselves in real-world experience early, preparing them for their next steps in their life and career.

HSETV is our student-run broadcast program, bringing daily content to our school and the surrounding community. HSETV is split into two class periods that occur during the first period on either day of our block schedule to record an approximately four minute newscast, The Royal Rundown, to air the next morning. In daily newscasts, anchors cover school news, world events, sports updates, and entertainment segments. When not working to film newscasts, members of the broadcast team create short and long form news packages to air alongside daily information or on our social media platforms. Broadcast staff members experiment with numerous on and off camera jobs as well as leadership roles like Producer and Contend Lead to learn how a professional news station would run.

Public Relations leverages an “agency model” to provide students with real-world, hands-on opportunities to apply journalism skills in a journalism-adjacent creative capacity. Our 30-person staff is led by both the adviser and team leads. Each day, the adviser starts class with an all-hands meeting before turning the time over to team leads, who manage a daily meeting with their teams to discuss the day’s goals and expectations.

Day-to-day activities may include taking photos and b-roll, photo and video editing, storyboarding, sending professional emails, or meeting with clients. With experience working with both internal and external clients, students gain a wide variety of unique experiences. While some may expect PR to be classroom-based, they may be surprised to find that most of the work is done out in the school and community. Most class periods, students are not physically in the classroom; instead, they spend time meeting with clients, working in the community to take photos, gather b-roll, and collect artifacts for their designated clients.

When a project concludes, students deliver a case study to the class, showcasing their work and feedback from the client. After completing a campaign, students are left with valuable skills, including professional communication, journalistic writing, photography, videography, and editing. This class provides high schoolers a rare opportunity to immerse themselves in real-world experience early, preparing them for their next steps.

Film Studio will operate like a fully functioning film studio. Mr. Follis has 20 years of working with students to make films in addition to his own work professionally in film.  The class will be modifying the award-winning program from Olio Road Productions feature length films into a short film model.  In the class students will work small groups on making their own short films.  This will include writing, storyboarding, designing, editing, and marketing in class. Outside of class students will film their movies.  Students will be responsible for fundraising, finding locations, getting props, finding music, promoting the films, making posters and trailers.   We will then release the films at film festivals and film competitions.