By: Katelyn Weddle
Redwood Gigantea’s first print edition of the year was handed out to students on Friday, November 5, by the students from Journalism 1 and 2.
Abigail Miller ‘22, 4-year journalism student, designed the whole newspaper on her own. Miller says that “I took all of the stories that our editors have sent me, which writers wrote, and I put them in a visually pleasing layout.”
This being the Cowhide Edition, “there’s a lot of history behind it” and writers “talk[ed] to Redwood alumni and all that sort of stuff.”
Miller feels that the newspaper brought a sense of community to the campus. “After like a year of not being able to physically pass stuff out to kids, it was really cool to physically give people copies of something that our class works really hard on.”
Personally, this newspaper meant a lot to Miller because while it was her second one she designed, and “it’s the first one I’ve been like super, super proud of, and after coming from a year of online journalism writing about a school which wasn’t in session, I think it’s a really cool thing to put out there.”
Miller is excited for future print editions, and training up other journalism students to lay out and design their section of the paper.
Micah Stipech ‘23, is a first-year journalism student who had an article in the newspaper.
Stipech says that “it was a blast” having a story in the paper. He did not realize until later that his story “Redwood’s ‘All-School Show’ Makes Its Way Back in Recent Auditions” was being used in the print edition.
Despite not knowing at first, Stipech was very excited.
When handing out the papers, Stipech explains that it was “very nice but intense at times.” One student “ripped it in front of [his] eyes”, but besides that incident, “it was good anytime someone took it and they began to read it.”
Stipech says that “[he] had a bit of a smile on my face like ‘yes! They are reading it.’”
When asked if he was ready for future newspapers this school year, Stipech says “heck yeah I am!”
Elliecate Flora ‘23 is a Redwood student who read the first newspaper of the year.
Flora says, “I thought there was a lot of good information in there, and it was a good overview of what’s happened so far in the school year.”
As a water polo player herself, Flora’s favorite part of the paper was the water polo story.
Flora explains that it was very nice to read what is going on at Redwood, and “I’ll be interested to see what type of features they put in and stuff after the fall season.”
ASB teacher Mrs. Aston says, “I thought it was a great first paper, it’s fun to see it all in print and I thought they had a really good variety of stories.”
Aston “always enjoy[s] reading the paper, especially if I know the kid who has written it, that’s always fun for me to read.”
She feels that it is really cool to be able to hear student’s perspectives. “It’s nice to see their thoughts and then the way you guys write it, I like seeing the kid perspective.”
When asked what makes the newspaper special, Aston notes that it is the “only high school newspaper in Visalia” and “I just like it as a way to remember history right now that’s not just a picture online. You have a physical copy of it so I think that’s really fun.”
Katelyn Weddle
Katelyn Weddle '23 is a third year journalism student. She enjoys designing the Redwood Gigantea newspaper. Outside of writing, she is a Chief Editor for Redwood yearbook. You can reach her at katel.we3140@vusd.us
Tags: abigail miller, clubs & lifestyles, cowhide, elliecate flora, gigantea newspaper, Micah Stipech, Mrs. Aston, newspaper, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism
When I attended RHS (class of ‘96), we had a printed version and it was a lot of fun to read through the articles as well as save important ones that were memorable. I still have a few copies!