Lafayette High School’s Commodore Media Group is coming off a rousing success of its yearbook, The Commodore winning Best-Of, courtesy of the MSPA Fall Convention. For how they were able to achieve their level of success, Student Media Adviser Loidha Bautista gave insight into how the journalism program has found its identity more in the aspects of Integrated Marketing and Communication.
“The journalism program at Lafayette follows more of an IMC mode,” Bautista said. “We are more of the new media for sure. I did the IMC graduate program at Ole Miss and found out that I had been running it like that the whole time. So we really embraced it, and that’s why we branded as Commodore Media Group, to encompass all of our publications.”
Talking about the yearbook development, senior student Ava May explained the entire process of how it is developed, including the influx of new students working in the program this year. May is a multi-year member of the program, now the Editor in Chief and serving as an Executive Board Member for Commodore Media.
“When we started developing this book, I knew it was mine to lead,” May said.
“I knew what I wanted it to look like, but the moment I stepped into the room, we had a class of nearly all freshmen that have never touched a yearbook before. There was a lot of learning and training that went into it. We had a lot of issues to begin with, and we struggled a lot with writing and understanding what a yearbook article is supposed to look like. But as the year went on, we developed a lot of great writers.”
For The Commodore, it takes many skills and tasks for students to work on throughout the semester. Many key roles students play have to be developed while in the classroom. May continued to highlight what she described as essentially a job, as the way they operate is in similarly to a professional workplace.
“It goes from everything, such as the actual technical designing to using software like Adobe and Canva,” May said. “We’ve also learned how to work as a team. To me this is set up like a job, because we have coworkers and are producing something for our business or school district. But we’ve also learned how to design and catch little things that sneak by. There are physical traits and characteristics that we’re starting to develop between each other, like confidence and communication.”
Continuing on with the reach in the community, Bautista emphasized how important that is for the students, allowing them to increase their horizons and adequately represent themselves, Lafayette High School, and local businesses.
“It’s visual communication that we stress from the IMC aspect,” Bautista said. “One of the reasons I know it’s working is they’re having success with the representing the school and the community. For example, Ava was approached to do morning announcements. And that goes to just about everybody one or two years in, they’re not afraid to communicate at any level. And I think that’s where we are having a lot of success, but now as we learn the principles and rules of the journalism part, they put it all together.”
The communication with local businesses and reach in the community comes back to the biggest issue Commodore media group faces: money. Many efforts go into raising funds to keep the student media operating, highlighting the need for establishing relationships with potential funders.
“Something that we struggle with very often is money, that financial aspect of all our publications is something that we have to take into account,” May said. “We have to produce this book, and we need that finances to actually get it out. And we do a lot of fundraising, whether it’s selling the ads or hosting a pageant for our school. Another part is trying to actually communicate with those businesses and having to physically see them, including dropping a pitch as to why they should support our yearbook. We have to communicate with our community. My email is stacked with people that I ask if they want a yearbook ad.”
The Commodore winning Best-Of was a process five years in the making, as Lafayette was not able to make the time for each of the last four conventions. The yearbook had previously won the award shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to major issues for the program that they have finally overcome.
“This yearbook is the second time they’ve won it, but it’s been enough years in between that I’m able to see now what the first success did for us and what’s happened in between,” Bautista said. “Unfortunately when we first won it, COVID happened the next year and we had to rebuild pretty much everything. Next we went to block schedules, which was a huge challenge. So we didn’t have the class for the full year, instead a one semester class where we could not meet the deadline in time for the next four years, finally until now. That’s a huge testament to Ava and her group because it was their book, they put their heart and soul into it in order to finish. It was a lot of hard work over many hours.”
The feeling of The Commodore winning the award was felt strongly by both May and Bautista, and the rest of the students as well. May in particular described her reaction as a series of emotions that nearly overwhelmed her.
“There wasn’t just one reaction for me, it was like a surplus of emotions all at once,” May said. “I remember sitting there and I was trying not to get my hopes up. The next thing I see is our black cover come up, and I freeze, but my friend Ford was the opposite. He lets out a scream of joy because he was with me at the school for times like 15 hours straight completing this book. Those endless hours of creativity and critiques and hard work are being recognized. It was just such a unique feeling.”
Bautista gives all the credit to her students, amplifying the hard work they go through, but May spoke for the other students as well when it came to how they appreciate their adviser.
“I direct things, but these kids do it all,” Bautista said. “Anything that has my name attached to it is because of them. I’m very proud of them, and their success is my success. I benefit a lot from what they do.”
“We wouldn’t be anything without Bautista either,” May said. “She constantly gives us critiques and allows us to do better, but also reassures us that we are good enough that we can succeed in what we do.”
To learn more about the Commodore Media Group, check out the link below:
https://commodoremedia.org/tag/lafayette-high-school/
