Three classes, three platforms and countless stories — at White Station High School (WSHS), “The Scroll,” “The Shield” and the Communications Team each work to document and share the stories of WSHS students.

From documenting articles in print to providing online updates, these groups each play a similar yet separate role as the news providers for WSHS. 

“I feel whenever people think of White Station media, they just think of one specific group out of the three,” Adaria Crutcher (12), Managing Editor of “The Scroll,” said. “However, each coverage team is vital to showcasing the true experience of being a Spartan. Even though all three teams serve different purposes, the media we produce proudly displays the White Station experience.”

“The Scroll” varies from the two other sources as it is delivered in the form of a physical newspaper built off interviews from students, staff, alumni and more. “The Scroll” produces six printed newspaper issues throughout the school year, and each issue has the goal of providing well-rounded, unbiased news for the students and staff at WSHS. The newspaper itself is unique to WSHS as it is one of only a few printed school newspapers in Memphis Shelby County. 

“This year, I’m the managing editor, and Kate Metcalf is the Editor-in-Chief for ‘The Scroll,’” Crutcher said. “The staff works extremely hard to create relevant, engaging student news. Our entire newspaper is student-run, where we do our own interviews [and] articles and [take our own] photos. We might be high schoolers, but we put in a lot of effort to produce a professional-looking paper.”

“The Scroll” works to cover important news about students and groups at WSHS through their Sports and News and Features sections of the paper. The newspaper and its writers attempt to include relevant and impactful topics in the paper with the Arts and Entertainment and Viewpoint sections. Each section of the paper has a different approach to the coverage of events and people that impact the WSHS and Memphis community. 

“At ‘The Scroll,’ we don’t limit ourselves to what’s new around the school; instead, we cover various topics, just like in any other newspaper,” Crutcher said. “We aren’t just writing stories but building relationships with anyone we embark on. Everyone has a unique story waiting to be told. Sometimes, you just have to dig deeper to see what makes that person extraordinary.”

On the other hand, “The Shield” acts to create a comprehensive record of the student’s experiences and milestones in the yearbook, which is sold during the final weeks of every school year. Each year, a new theme is chosen to uniquely document the clubs, sports and students throughout the entirety of the school year. 

“[The yearbook] is such an important part of White Station — part of any high school [or of] any school at all,” Paxson Abney (12) said. “It’s like a way to go back, reminisce memories, the people you met, the people you don’t know [and] the people you’ll know later in life.” 

Abney, Sydney Zuber (12) and Lam Vo (12) have very important roles in the yearbook as Vice-Editor, Editor-in-Chief and the head of photography, respectively. However, as seniors, their role in creating what is their final yearbook  becomes more than just making spreads and documenting students — it becomes personal. 

“I think the leadership from our last year’s editors and the staff surrounding that were very impactful on myself and who I am today,” Abney said. “So, if I could leave that kind of impact on people, I would be really happy with that. And then the same with the creative process; I feel like this yearbook gets to be a manifestation of what I see and how I feel. And because it’s senior year, it’s personal.” 

The yearbook staff is able to concentrate their efforts into one production throughout the entire school year. This singular focus allows them to document each and every WSHS student and event to the best of their ability. Because of this documentation, students can look back on their high school years and see their growth from year to year. 

“My favorite part [of the class] is that it captures the memories,” Vo said. “Everybody can get a book and they can look back on their past school year and all the memories we had.”

For many years, “The Scroll” and “The Shield” had an often tense sense of competitiveness; however, what was once considered a strained relationship has developed into a healthy rivalry. 

“Sometimes a healthy rivalry is a good thing because it can push the other teams to do better on their [own] projects,” Zuber said. “I feel like there’s beef between every yearbook and newspaper, but not anymore; it’s just always been this way, so it’s fun to joke that we have a rivalry.”

The classes have even planned to collaborate amongst the news providers at WSHS. Although the style of writing and the product of the two classes vary greatly, there are shared elements like photos that can be used by both classes. 

“[The yearbook] documents recent events so that we can have that collection for the end of the year, and “The Scroll” does that as well,” Abney said. “So then we thought, ‘why not just combine the two and share photos — whoever has the best one?’ We have a lot of talented photographers that can get those really good photos.”

This school year, a new player entered the game of WSHS news coverage — the Communications Team. During the final months of the 2023-2024 school year, WSHS alumni Brianna Harris developed a seventh-period class similar to that of “The Scroll” and “The Shield”. As the teacher for all of the psychology classes at WSHS, as well as the teacher for the Dual Enrollment Academic Seminar and TN Student Success, Harris was more than ready to adopt the role of teacher for the new Communications Team. 

“I got my bachelor’s degree in communications, so that’s pretty much my background,” Harris said. “I used to do content marketing, social media management [and] things like graphics. So [communications] has always been a part of me that I really enjoy … [I enjoy] getting to do the first thing [that] I fell in love with. I love communications, and honestly, when I was first thinking about teaching, I wanted to teach like a communications-type-based class — like media.”

One of the first steps for the Communications Team was to get everyone in the class comfortable on camera and speaking to an interview subject. They spent a week before school preparing themselves by conducting mock interviews and preparing equipment. Now that the school year has started, the team films the morning announcements on Tuesdays and Thursdays and often creates TikToks to showcase students through current social media trends.

“[The Communications Team] started off with social media in the school, but then it was kind of like, well, if it’s communications, we can tackle all aspects of media … Basically I tell people I’m lucky because now I’m using both of my degrees,” Harris said. “I’ve been able to see everybody’s personalities come alive and see everybody get more and more comfortable with public speaking. So [during] that week of training, I forced everybody to interview somebody at the school, get comfortable being on

camera … go up and talk to people, introduce themselves and put a mic [in] people’s faces.”

Unlike “The Scroll” and “The Shield,” the Communications Team covers news through the lens of digital media. Each class has a different way of gathering information and presenting it to the school. Because of this, the Communications Team hopes to work with all other WSHS teams and news platforms to provide a different perspective through their work. 

“Our focus is digital media,” Harris said. “So, the overall goal is just to help spread messages, not only in the school community, but the outside community as well … We help spread news, but in a different way than [‘The Scroll’ does] … All of us have different reasons for why we’re getting information. So I might have [the communications team] go to Ms. Holland … but she’s just quick with [information]. But she might come to [‘The Scroll’] and give you a more detailed explanation as to the reason behind [new implementations like advisory] … So I think as the year [progresses], we’ll be able to help each other out … But overall, I think for the school, I think it’s going to help the overall perception of the school. Like with everybody working together.”

Whether it be through a newspaper, a yearbook or a TikTok, WSHS has access to many forms of news. Even with these vastly different platforms, each class has the same goal for their productions: to spread messages and represent WSHS. 

“We’re all going to end up working together at some point,” Harris said. “You know, everybody’s doing the same thing. We’re all spreading messages. We’re just all doing it in a different form.”