Hitting close so far away
A student's perspective

by Karina Serna

As we were planning the second issue of the Register, I was thinking of the impact of Hurricane Katrina's devastation and the rebuilding efforts that would follow. But if hurricane relief efforts were going to be the only subjects on our page, we were either going to have to find other ways to localize it for our students or give up the idea.

Mrs. Ann Herrman, the publications adviser, told us to find a local angle and the only way to go about this was to go out into the Richmond High School halls and talk to students one-on-one.  This was accomplished by several people on staff, who went to the cafeteria during lunch and interviewed students who had relatives who were directly affected by the devastation of hurricane Katrina.  The students that they found would be the subjects of the “"Katrina hits close to home"”section of the spread. 

Later, Brian Weddle, a junior at RHS, brought in a page from a the Ball State Daily News with pictures his brother had taken while touring the hurricane area with the sheriff department of Henry County.  His brother, Chris Weddle was a 2002 RHS graduate and is now a senior at Ball State, majoring in photography. He had been the chief photographer on the Register staff while in high school.  Mrs. Herrman e-mailed Chris and got permission to use his photos.  Chris also volunteered a photo of himself that a fellow photographer had taken. With this new input, we decided to turn this into a double-truck, because we had so many good photos and story material.

Check out the Register's doubletruck package on Katrina. Click here to download a PDF.

Later that week, I got the chance to interview him via telephone.

Talking to Chris for this interview in itself was definitely interesting.  Since he had seen the hurricane damage, he gave an accurate description of the damage and how the relief efforts were coming along.  Without that interview, it would have been very difficult to give the page a “"face,"” or a more personal angle.  It would have been difficult not to give the spread an incorrect perception of the hurricane, and I think most of us just had what we saw on the news to give us any idea of the hurricane.  For this reason, I considered Chris' input to the page indispensable.

Other changes we made were how RHS students could take part in the hurricane relief efforts. Initially, there was a story that I had written on how Richmond businesses were helping towards these relief efforts. The problem here was that one could drop off donations at these businesses, but other donation efforts were exclusive to the business itself. So I just decided to contact the businesses that students would recognize and could give donations to.

To bring in the high school itself, the assistant page editor wrote a story on how the G.R.E.E.N. club adviser was collecting donations for the hurricane victims.

All in all, the hurricane Katrina page turned out really well.  What was so unique about it was that someone who had personally been to the devastated area, Chris Weddle, was willing to give his input.  It just gave the page a “more realistic” sense, like a real newspaper that has reporters on the site, not the typical high school news page.  I think we were all pleased to hear the positive comments on the page, because we worked hard to put it together.

Karina Serna is a junior at Richmond High School.  This is her third year on the Register staff, and her second year as the Infocus editor. She enjoys theatre. Her hobbies include reading, singing and writing.  She enjoys being on Register because it has improved her writing and reporting skills, and she has met many new people.  She also believes it exercises her creativity when designing the Infocus pages. She sees herself continuing her writing career throughout college and in the future, possibly as a profession.

Karina's journalism teacher, Ann Herrman, is adviser of the Register newspaper and Pierian yearbook at Richmond (Ind.) High School. She speaks at various state and national conventions, and was named Adviser of the Year in 2002 by the Indiana High School Press Association. She can be contacted at register@rcs.k12.in.us.