Rebecca Dominy - Norseman Podcast

Norseman assistant editor Reily Dominy sat down with journalism adviser Mrs. Rebecca Dominy to talk about the changes that have taken place within the journalism department and communication. Look for a more in-depth newspaper article in the first edition of the BHS Norseman newspaper coming out soon.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey Vikes, I'm Reily Dominy and this is the Norseman podcast. Today I'm here with journalism
advisor Mrs. Rebecca Dominy to talk about school communication and changes in journalism over the
last 20 years. Thanks for having me. Okay, first question, how did you decide you wanted
to do what you do? I knew I wanted to be a journalism advisor since I was a sophomore

(00:21):
in high school. I joined the journalism staff at Livingston High School when I was there my
sophomore year and I was on the newspaper and the yearbook staff. I just fell in love with
it so I knew that's what I wanted to do. I went to college at A&M and I got a BS in journalism.

(00:43):
I graduated and I wasn't sure what I was going to do because journalism jobs are not really,
there's not a lot of them because there's like one per school.
I started looking for different jobs and I can teach English as well, but Onalaska,
Texas, a tiny little town, they were building a new high school and they never had a high

(01:07):
school before so they offered me a job to start the program there. I took the job and about two
weeks later I just really felt like God was telling me that's not where I was supposed
to be so I quit that job didn't have another job lined up. I started looking for a job again and
then I got a job offer here. I taught English for one year and then I moved into what I'm doing now.

(01:33):
That's cool, what is the most challenging part of leading the Norsemen? There's a lot of
difficult things about working with the newspaper staff. It involves a lot of moving pieces.The
staff is a bunch of students so that brings a a lot of challenges in and of itself. It's not

(01:55):
their job, they're not journalists by trade, it's a class that they take so there's a lot of time
commitment but there's also a balance because it's not their job so just you know helping
them learn how to do it and then execute it well can be a little difficult. It's pretty stressful

(02:19):
knowing that everything your students do is going to be put out there to the public and then
with how things are now preserved forever for the public. Not a lot of other classes experience that
so you know just making sure that you really look at everything and that you provide information

(02:40):
while keeping everything in check. What is your favorite part of teaching the Norseman?
I love teaching newspaper. A lot of times I'll have kids for three or four years and I like
having that continuity within the class and getting to see kids really grow up from their
freshman to sophomore year as they develop as tiny humans beyond what's going on in the class,

(03:07):
but just who they are. I really enjoy that and it becomes a family. The kids
are a lot of times kids that wouldn't have anything in common otherwise,
but they're thrown into this room together and produce something pretty remarkable and they
just become like a family to each other. What are some of the new additions to The Norseman?

(03:33):
So we've tried to turn a corner. I've been doing this, I've been teaching at
Bryan High for 20 years and before that I was in college before that I was in a newspaper
class myself and I will tell you that when I started in newspaper the the books that
we had didn't even mention the internet. The first place to get the internet at my

(03:55):
high school was the journalism room and that was my sophomore year of high school
so things have changed a lot and we're trying to keep up with that and it brings up some
difficulties but some really great opportunities too. This year we have added the podcast and we're
doing video broadcast for weekly news segments and hopefully we'll be adding some more things

(04:19):
as well in January. We're going to put our app live for everyone to be able to download and get
the news about the school on their phone. They'll have push notifications so whatever new stories or
other information is launched, it goes straight to their phone and gives them a notification.

(04:41):
We're just trying to keep pace with the current standards of journalism while keeping everyone
informed and still preserving what we've done in the past with a print paper because kids really
like to see their stuff in print and there's just something about holding a actual paper. Why did
you decide to make these new additions? Like I said, just just to keep up and to make things

(05:05):
more relevant to students. To help students keep more informed, keep parents more informed and just
get information out there to them but also give more of our students a voice. You know
the students have always done a great job doing coverage on feature stories and news stories about
individuals at the school whether they're teachers or students but this way, you know having having a

(05:31):
podcast, with them getting to hear a little bit more and then still doing that written article
to go a little bit more in depth have some other voices really complements each other
what is the most difficult part of keeping. What is the most difficult part
of keeping people informed?It's kind of like what they say about

(05:52):
technology, you know it's great when it works and awful when it doesn't. It's kind of the same thing
with communication. We have more ways than ever before to keep people informed but the consumer
also has this expectation that everything is going to be delivered to them so we have found that

(06:14):
it can become a roadblock if things take one or two clicks even to get information
to them. We want to make sure we're providing information that is easily accessible and
in multiple ways and avenues of delivering that information. I don't want to say the

(06:39):
consumers become lazy but to a degree we all have whether it's shopping online or having
streaming networks and things like that we all want things to come to us without having to go
anywhere. The other difficult part is just the communication in general. Getting the information.

(07:01):
Bryan High is a huge campus, we have a lot of moving parts so getting information from teachers,
sponsors, coaches, all of those and getting those into one place so we can send that out and
communicate that to parents and community members can be a little difficult. Okay, well Mrs. Dominy

(07:23):
thank you for joining me today I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with us. Thank you.