The Wonderful World of High School Media

Lots of schools have their own little media empires going, which cover everything from student concerns ("OPINION: The Gym Mats Are So Gross That I Think I Got Typhus From Them") to administrative announcements ("NOTICE: Gym Closed Until We Buy New Gym Mats").

If you go to a smaller school with no such empire, and your morning announcements just consist of the principal mumbling over the PA while occassionally bumping into the mic, here's some of the (frequently hilarious) stuff you might be missing.

1.) Televised Morning Announcements
Contains: Reminder that it's Deep-Fried Twinkie Day in the cafeteria, confusingly-reported news stories, stock footage of the American flag for the Pledge of Allegiance, in case the actual flag in the classroom  is somehow insufficient.

Depending upon the talents of your A/V folks, TV announcements range from "polished, professional presentation" to "baffling catastrophe." Student anchors set the tone, and some varieties of these include:

* The Anchor Who Forgot To Breathe Before Going On Air And Now Has To Gasp Desperately In The Middle Of Every Sentence
* The Anchor Who Is Clearly Terrified Of Cameras, and Who Looks at the Screen Like You'd Look at an Onrushing Freight Train
* The Fast-Talking Super-Enthusiastic Anchor Who Cannot Possibly Pronounce "Ahmadinejad," But Darn It, He's Gonna Try
* The Bubbly Anchor Who Naturally Sounds Thrilled About Everything, Even When It's Totally Inappropriate ("Cameroon got hit by a big hurricane and then most of it burned down! Hooray!! Oh noo!")

2.) The School Newspaper
Contains: Hard-hitting expose about Deep-Fried Twinkie Day, crossword puzzles, shout-outs.

It may seem like a bunch of scrunched-together headlines about new teachers and football season, but the school paper is awesome, for two reasons. First, it's the only fresh information you have to read while trying desperately not to involve yourself in your most awkward class. Second: Personals. Personals are the section wherein you tell incomprehensible inside jokes to your friends, in print, in a way that nobody else will possibly ever understand.  You'll submit something like, "JOSH: GREEN BEANS!" and later in the week Josh will run up to you and scream, "OMG, I know what that means!" and you and Josh will be the best BFFs this side of the teachers' lounge.

3.) The School Website
Contains: Reassurances to parents that there is no such thing as Deep-Fried Twinkie Day, calendars, broken links.

You may never have seen your school's website, but it's probably there, gathering Internet Dust and putting on a good show for interested parents. It exists primarily for your school to place a bunch of respectable nouns next to pictures of students ("Education. Responsibility. Schoolfulness.") The point of interest for you, though, is that you may very well be in one of these pictures, and if you don't already know that you are, then congratulations! You're the one who was caught sneezing or yawning or doing something that even you can't figure out, in the background of some otherwise innocuous photo, immortalized forever as some kind of surprised mutant.

Has a horrible pic of you ever turned up in some high school media?

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