Hello! This is our second article for Scholastic Journalism Week, where we celebrate and emphasize student journalism’s role in society. We hope you enjoy this piece as much as we did creating it.
Ever since 2015, Grovewatch has been the home for student-produced articles on Inlet Grove High School and other subjects, such as movies, sports, and cultural and political issues. In honor of this site’s lifespan and student journalism as a whole, we’ve decided to go back to 2020 to find our best writers and editors since then and congratulate them.
Please note that nobody was surveyed for these picks and that these are the choices of only a few people in our crew. If you think we missed somebody in this list, leave a comment about who it is and why they should be here. Also, when “I” is used, it’s referring to the writer of this article, Johnny Jean.
Alaja Depina
Starting with the only writer on this list that’s still in Inlet to this day, Depina is the Managing Editor of the current school year (2024-2025).
She’s a Senior who was originally in the Medical academy, but she switched to Journalism later on, and it shows!
Highlights:
This story is rather unique, as it was updated with more and more photos as Canesfest 2023 went on. And it’s not just more pictures for the sake of having more pictures, there’s a purpose to every single one. In the end, the article was finished with a grand total of 100 photos, making it easily one of the largest slideshows ever produced on Grovewatch.
I would assume that sports-related articles aren’t too difficult to make, and thus not much can be done to make a sports article better than your average one. But as it turns out, every nail that could be hit was hit on the head here. The title along with the lead “TUFF LUCK” is humorous, the caption is concise, and there’s no filler in the photo selection.
Dafany Miranda-Zepeda
Next up is another Managing Editor, this time from 2021-2022. Miranda originally came to Inlet partaking in the Pre-Law academy, but just like our previous writer, she eventually switched to Journalism.
From her staff profile: “Journalism has been a wonderful experience because writing has always been a passion of mine so I’m glad to improve on my writing skills.”
Being a member of the National Honor Society, she made articles on NHS events often, but not always.
Highlights:
Opinion articles (“Let the earth breathe“, “SJW: Forgotten history“, “Restraining progress“, etc.)
Now, I am the current Opinion Editor of Grovewatch, although I have remained rather dormant in making or editing any columns. If I was doing the latter right now, articles like these would be the ones that I’m looking for.
Miranda doesn’t tend to hold back much when it comes to her opinion, which I sincerely respect. For the very few opinion pieces that come out of Grovewatch today, the author may give the entirety of their milquetoast take in a single sentence. But that’s enough ranting for now..
It’s an article about NHS members harvesting peppers. That’s basically it. And somehow, I enjoyed it. What else is there to say?
Skyy Hinson
For our third writer, we have Skyy Hinson, who was the Managing Editor (apparently we have a very keen eye for good Managing Editors) of Grovewatch for the first quarter of 2020. She was a Pre-Law major, cheerleader and advanced journalist during her time at Inlet Grove.
On her staff profile, it says that she plans on owning her own business once she graduates, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s the same person that’s in this interview.
Highlights:
SJW 2020 (“SJW Day 2: Take it to the Community Day“, “SJW Day 4: Thank you!“, etc.)
The SJW 2020 crew did a great job with the assignment that they had, and their performance serves as inspiration for our crew this year. Hinson in particular helped with making that week as good as it was, by preparing morning announcements for each day of SJW, creating, editing and posting videos, conducting interviews and more.
I will admit that this choice is rather biased on my part, but I feel like this is a subject that still isn’t discussed enough. The nauseating cycle of a school shooting happening, people pushing for even looser gun laws that hardly help, and then the students that survived the incident getting ignored is certainly something to write an article on, and I think Hinson did that well here.
Before we move on to our last writer, here are some honorable mentions that you can check out if you want to.
Ashley St Jean, “Sleep famine”
Alex Zacarias, “Swamp robotics”
Ken’Naiyah Chaney, “Restricted zone”
And now, our last writer. Who could forget..
Brianna Luberisse
Easily the most prestigious writer in Grovewatch history, Luberisse was the Editor-In-Chief for Grovewatch from 2017-2020. She first came to Inlet as a Journalism major and stuck with it to the very end, publishing 105 stories on Grovewatch (excluding Grovewatch TV posts) over the course of her years here.
There may be a billion things to say about her that we don’t have the time for, but it’s worth mentioning that she won a $4,000 scholarship from the 37th annual Pathfinder Awards in 2020 by taking 1st place in the Communications category. Currently, she is attending FAMU as a graphic design major.
Highlights:
Where do we even start…
I’ll leave you with this: Here’s a plethora of articles that I liked from Luberisse, and you can decide which is your favorite.
“Reality vs. media”, “Shark sighting”, “Glad to be a grad: Class of 2019”, “Pathfinder Awards: Honoring excellence” (foreshadowing..), “Fearless is strong: Black women” (featuring Luberisse’s mother?), “Broadcasting Canes”, “Know your Junior Class candidates”, “Canes’ season kickoff”, and “Another ‘Outlet’ for the Canes’ skills”.
Thanks for reading. Once again, leave a comment if you think that there’s another writer that should be here, and we hope to see you again for SJW Day 3 soon.
