As the school year winds down, the Portage High School Publications Department enters a transitional stage. For adviser Melissa Deavers-Lowie, the end of the year serves as an opportune time to look back at the accomplishments of the graduating seniors, while planning ahead for what next year will bring.
Since Deavers-Lowie took over as adviser, the Publications Department has expanded in both the quantity and quality of the publications.
“I think ‘grow’ is the proper word to use in several different aspects,” she said. “First of all, we offer more than we offered when I first came in. When I first came in, we had the typical journalism department setup, where you had journalism classes, which are the intro classes, and then there was a yearbook class and a newspaper class and that was it.”
Since that time, PHS has added a website, online radio station and closed circuit television station. Weekly talk shows and select sporting event broadcasts air on the student run radio station, Pow Wow Radio, which can be heard on powwowradio.net. The Indians News Network TV station airs a morning news program that is shown to the entire student body every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
“Not only have we grown as a publications staff, but we’ve kind of changed the culture and the expectations of the school as well,” Deavers-Lowie said. “They expect the high quality publications now; it’s not enough to just say, ‘Well, we’ll put out whatever.’ It has to be quality because that is what the students and teachers expect.”
According to Deavers-Lowie, participating in student publications teaches students writing skills in addition to showing them how to communicate with people and work in a team setting, all assets that will benefit them regardless of their future endeavors.
On the Pow Wow staff, an immense hole will be left by the graduation of senior editors Brandon Vickrey, Collin Czilli, Eric Mesarch, Emily Evans, Peyton Hulse, Katie Peksenak and Olivia Forrester.
“This is an absolutely stellar senior class that has just blown me away with their ability,” Deavers-Lowie said. “I hope that they can take this experience and utilize it in their futures. I just hope it was as positive of an experience for them as it was for me.”
The lone returning member of the editorial board is junior Josh Lewis, who will take over for Vickrey as next year’s editor-in-chief. Lewis found out that he will be in charge next year when the staffs were announced at the Publications Awards Banquet in May.
“I had this weird, surreal moment when I was walking up there and I saw everybody lined up and I had this thought in my head where I just instantly knew that next year was going to be great,” Lewis said. “I just had this weird connection that happened where I was just smiling really big.”
Lewis’s plans for next year’s Pow Wow include modernizing the design of the newspaper.
“I want to make it more visually pleasing,” he said. “I want to take it more in a yearbook direction in a sense with a lot more graphics and cutouts and different designs and make it more edgy and a little bit more modern.”
Vickrey, Czilli and Mesarch have formed a broadcasting triumvirate over the last four years. Czilli and Vickery started the radio program as freshman, while Mesarch joined the radio team as a sophomore. The trio initiated the Indians News Network their sophomore year, a program that Mesarch and Vickrey have anchored ever since with Czilli serving as the producer and station director.
“This is something that I never imagined I would get involved in, but it has turned into something that I love doing and something that I want to be involved in,” Czilli said. “Journalism has been one of the greatest things of my high school career. It helps you get involved with other people and get to know other people.”
Next year, two very different faces will greet the student body each morning on INN. Kiley Jones will take over for Vickrey as the sports anchor, while Jessica Marquez will fill Mesarch’s chair as news anchor. Maxwell Harsha will be next year’s INN station director.
While the Pow Wow and broadcasting staffs will be altered greatly by the graduation of this year’s seniors, most of the Legend Yearbook staff will remain intact under the direction of Nick Jordan, who enters his second year as editor-in-chief.
“One of the things that I’m most confident about is that we’re going to make an outstanding book next year; I have no doubt about that,” Jordan said. “My primary focus is that the staff has a great year and that the staff really bonds. I want to have get-togethers all the time outside of school; I want to start some unique yearbook traditions. I really want to make sure that Legend is one of the best parts of people’s day.”
This year, Jordan was one of only three returning staff members with the quality of the Legend dependent on a slew of newcomers.
“I was a little nervous at first because they were all brand new,” he said. “It was a little rocky at first because we did a whole new design, but starting second semester we came back with a whole new attitude and we all just wanted to make this the best book we can. This year’s staff really has a passion for yearbook; they really understand that what they’re doing does have a purpose.”
Awards hauled in by the publications department this year include becoming a National Sample Yearbook, Hoosier Star Finalists honors for Pow Wow and Legend, becoming the first school in state history to have three Student Journalist of the Year finalists and winning Harvey Awards and Indiana High School Press Association Fall Convention On-Site Contests.
However, for Deavers-Lowie and the budding journalists, student publications are about much more than simply winning awards.
“I’m not sure you can quantify it,” Superintendent Ric Frataccia said. “Qualitatively, I see it as an immense asset. It gives kids an outlet for their creativity and energy. By using their creativity and energy, they communicate to the outside world what our life is like. I think they do a great job with it; I really do.”