IGLoBE

Have you ever wondered about the history of The iGlobe, and how it all started? The high points, hiccups along the way, noteworthy staff, and everything in between? If yes, then keep reading to learn about our shared roots!

 

Recently, I had the wonderful chance to interview a K12 International Academy alumni, old friend, and more specifically, our previous iGlobe Editor-in-Chief –Michael U.

 

Before we dive in, allow me to begin with a quick anecdote… Personally, and this may even be a confession, I stumbled into iGlobe by accident; I got a k-mail reminder about a meeting later in the evening, which I misread as an iGlobe Live meeting (what’s that, you ask? just hold tight, we’ll get there). I entered and realized it was a staff meeting, and when asked if I would like to write for that summer 2012 edition, I thought, “well, sure, why not.” Since then, over my couple years working with Michael (the newly crowned Editor-in-Chief at the time) and the rest of the lovely staff consisting of very memorable students, we were all busy bees, and I never had the chance to learn the origins of The iGlobe, and how it flourished over time. Thus, this interview provided me a chance to further explore this interest, and hopefully, you are fascinated by our paper’s journey, its legend, and its future potential as much as I am!

 

I kicked off our interview (after the typical catchup between two friends who haven’t talked in forever), with inquiring the initial moderator of the paper, who, according to Mike, was Mrs. Palenque. “She was very involved in [The iGlobe’s] creation along with a girl whose name was Onastasia Y.” Indeed, Onastasia was among the first couple students rallying for the amazing opportunity of a student-run school newspaper at K12 IA, along with Mike’s brother, Alexander U., and later editors, Josephine C., and Ashley E. In fact, you see the header on the site with the coliseum and other world wonders? Alex U. made that, except, originally, it was blue and green, as shown below:

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Furthermore, I pondered the students’ motives in assembling an entire school newspaper—it evidently takes much effort, organization, and creativity—so, why carry it out? He recounted, “When they first started the newspaper, I do not believe they meant for it to be as much as a ‘newspaper’ but more of a place for hobbyist writers to display their works.” As a result, “the most filled up section was always Creativity 101 because a great deal of initial members, such as my brothers, all wrote short stories.” I can attest this trend actually continued for a long time; even about four years after iGlobe’s initiation, to the point that our current Advisors temporarily set a rule: if you provided a Creativity 101 piece, then, for the sake of ensuring the other sections don’t go starved, one must submit a piece for someplace else, too.

 

Moving on, I wanted to know about readership and the extent of staff commitment to the paper. Mike elaborated, “When it was created, I think my brother told me that they had gotten around 100 votes in the poll section, so they had a great deal of readers. However…the newspaper sort of started to slow down a bit.” Mike joined, “in the fall semester of 2010,” and when he, “got there, the newspaper wasn’t very big. It probably had about 8 or so constant regulars who contributed articles.” At the time, the Editor-in-Chief was Josephine, and Ash was the Assistant Editor, plus about six other staff writers. “We usually were able to fill up most of the sections, though once in a while, we had to leave some empty because no one could cover it.” Sure, there were plenty of categories, and sometimes not enough substance for them all—or at least not enough until a huge pile of work ended up toppled on the editors’ desks at last minute.

 

Yet, can we talk about the ingenuity that went into the beautiful category names? Ever since I joined the staff, I just loved the category titles, and how they avoided the clichéd labels of most school and broader newspapers. Mike noted, “We had Eyes on the Globe, Global Snapshot, Money Makes the World Go ‘Round, Play-by-Play, Cultural Crafts and Cooking, [Pet Pix], Counselor’s Corner, Beyond the Books, Weird Science and Creativity 101.” There were some others, like iCademy Connex, and Far Fetched Factoids. As you all can tell, they were all unique, despite some of them getting the cut and merged over the years.

 

Of course, with all this creative success, there were also some pitfalls and lack of total outreach—and, this being an interview with Mike, I knew I wouldn’t exit it without bluntly humorous acknowledgement of such circumstances. Apparently, “the newspaper really did not get much traction [during its first few years]” and e-mails weren’t always sent out to students notifying them of new editions, as Mrs. Hartmann currently does. He claims frankly, “we were lucky if we got, like, 20 poll clicks…It was really, really tough.” Often times, everyone was uploading articles at the last minute; and, back then, instead of an editor doing all the publishing, students were responsible for their own pieces. Mike chuckled, “As for publications, I do not think the school heads looked at the site at all. It was truly, for a while before Mrs. Hartmann and Mr. Mistretta arrived, a “student run” paper. We probably could have written an article titled “Blah, blah, blah” and no one with iCademy would have noticed. To be honest, the newspaper was not as much of a real high school newspaper as what you guys have today or what we had a few years ago.” It may sound ridiculous, but it veers more toward truth than myth—with Mrs. H and Mr. M, not only would they review all the categories before publishing, the department heads would lend final “hawk eyes,” too. What’s even more amazing is that, now, it’s not only a high school paper; it includes the works of younger K12 IA students, as well – oh, the places you’ll all go! Mike continued, “It was more of just a place for hobbyist writers to write whatever. I mean, the newspaper does that now, but we really did not focus on current news issues. Just before the end of the 2010-2011 school year we had started to write opinion articles…They were well written, researched articles, but they really never focused too much on current news. And, there really weren’t many articles in the first place.” Just to give a better idea, “on average, we had about one in each section, except Creativity 101, which might have had two or three.

 

Finally, I wanted to know about the iGlobe’s funding and support from the school, as well as its design back then. Clearly, it “had its basic green format until you and I changed it to orange a few years ago.” Ah, I remember that distinctly. Mr. Mistretta and Mrs. Hartmann commenced the conversation, hoping to make the site more ‘professional’ looking, and after scouring through the web for decent samples, we settled on a more creamy beige background with hints of orange, yellow, and navy/indigo. As for financial backing from K12 IA, Mike admits, “All I know is that Mr. Mistretta saved the day when he paid for the newspaper with his own money when the school briefly stopped funding.” Honestly, this is probably where I  had to do the cackling – now I knew why Mr. M said no one should have to pay for anything related to the site on their own when I disclosed I was paying for some better apps with our new platform. But, we can talk about that later. Ultimately, the epic Advisors we currently have jumped in the game of The iGlobe in summer of 2011, and according to Mike, they, “came and revitalized the newspaper.” That’s when, “we became more of a newspaper, we reached out to people, started the iGlobe Live, etc.” iGlobe Live, for those of you who didn’t get a chance to experience it, was a live news session held every few months for a little while; usually three iGlobe staffers would present a topic of interest – it could have been new, or a presentation of one of their articles. Often, we even had live interviews! Mike concluded, “And then you came later that year and…well, you know the rest!”

 

Altogether, obviously, The iGlobe has come a long way, endeavoring from beta to what it is today, and could not have possibly been done without all the hard work, commitment, geniosity, and affability afforded by all students who have ever contributed, and all teachers who have ever allocated their precious time to—and their faith in—this paper. Needless to say, The iGlobe has a bright distant future beyond its thus far seven-plus years of existence, and I’m justifiably ecstatic to see where else it can go.

 

Thank you so much to Mike for his time and interest in reminiscing the foundations of something as important to our school as its own student newspaper!!

 

I truly hope all you iGlobers out there enjoyed this briefing on our legend, and that you’ll help continue it – furthermore, be sure to tune in next month for our Advisors’ perspectives, as well as in our final summer edition for the continuation of iGlobe’s, shall we say, “contemporary” history!

 

Salutaria!