How and Why to Get Involved with the Newspaper

How+and+Why+to+Get+Involved+with+the+Newspaper

Preslee Decker, Staff Writer

As scheduling sessions are coming around the corner, Central Hardin’s freshmen, sophomores, and juniors start to plan what classes you have to take and what classes you want to take as an elective.

If you are interested in anything involving writing or media, being a journalist for The Central Times is a great opportunity for you!

The newspaper helps you grow in so many different ways. 

From writing articles to helping with the social media aspect of our publication, you can gain good writing skills and experience. 

If you are planning to attend college after you graduate, you will most likely have to write papers often, and knowing how to format and write efficiently will help you succeed in those classes. 

The articles you write for the newspaper will commonly have deadlines set at the beginning of your writing process. While this seems scary, and even impossible to meet at times, the due date you set can sometimes be extended if needed.

This may not be the case in college, but the idea of a deadline will help prepare you for the expectations they set in your future classes.

While you do have to write quite a bit, you also get to do a lot of fun activities and have the chance at opportunities you wouldn’t get just anywhere.

Earlier last fall, our staff got an opportunity to travel to St.Louis, Missouri for the JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention. We really enjoyed the vast amount of options they offered for everyone, as well as the competitions they had for different areas of interests. 

For both Thanksgiving and Christmas, our class hosted potlucks. Everyone brought in a dish or two that contributed to the meals we ate for lunch. The staff was thrilled with being able to do team bonding activities that made us closer as a group and taught us new things about each other we wouldn’t know otherwise. 

Other team bonding activities that our staff participated in was a Dirty Santa game with our Christmas potluck. It was super funny to see what gifts people bought and the amount of people who wanted certain items. 

We also did a gingerbread house competition where we were split into groups and got different brands of gingerbread houses. This experience was fun and we learned strategies for future references. 

It isn’t all work all the time and we make sure that we have some fun as often as possible.

If these things sound appealing to you, here is how you apply!

  1. Make sure and sign up for Journalism-Newspaper class, which is an elective, when picking classes for your next year at Central. 
  2. Using this link, fill out the Google Form. This form will ask you your qualifications, experience, and why you would like to be a part of the staff. 
  3. Once the beginning of the next school year starts, you will either be accepted or kindly denied entry into the class.

We hope to see you next year!