Both The Rebellion and Rebel TV—an outlet of Walpole Media—endeavor to provide Walpole with student perspectives on the local and school community. With the launch of the Walpole Student Media Network website, both sources will publish online coverage as one entity. Through this collaboration, The Rebellion’s current website will absorb content from the Walpole Media website and adopt a new domain that corresponds with its new identity as Walpole Student Media Network. Funding from a Walpole Media grant has allowed WSMN to invest in interesting website features—such as a digital scoreboard for high school sports games—intended to engage the Walpole community. Through a summer journalism program, students and journalism adviser Conor Cashman are exploring how the grant should be used to better feature all facets of Walpole’s student media on the WSMN website.
“Our audiences can expect a more synchronized media coverage with more opportunities for students to report on issues that are important to our community,” Cashman said. “This platform should allow our organizations to collaborate to create more engaging content.”
The goal of the WSMN website is to create a more streamlined source of media for the Walpole community with the greatest difference from The Rebellion website being that videos will be featured regularly. The WSMN website will feature articles written by journalism students as well as news coverage recorded by Rebel TV. For particularly newsworthy stories, it is likely that there will be overlapping coverage. Rather than being redundant, such coverage will provide varying perspectives on issues that are important within the community.
“I'm really excited to have a new website that combines a lot of the media forms in Walpole,” Editor-in-Chief of The Rebellion Ashley Kuropatkin said. “Even though we live in a small town, there are a lot of news outlets between newspapers, websites, social media, and the school publications. It's great to have one outlet with different perspectives of what's going on in the town.”
The Rebellion will continue to publish the printed newspaper under its original name and the morning news will continue to feature The Rebel Report. However, publishing as one—online at least—will be highly beneficial in competition against other student media networks that operate in the same fashion. For instance, Wayland Student Press Network remains highly respectable within New England and nationwide for its wide variety of journalistic content that includes news, opinion, multimedia, sports broadcast, etc. Substantiating their achievements, Wayland Student Press Network has received awards from several organizations, which include: National Scholastic Press Association, Columbia Scholastic Press Association, The Webby Awards, and New England Scholastic Press Association.
“The students at Walpole High are so talented and I think this will be another way for them to show that talent inside the school and out in the community,” Rebel Report adviser Peter O’Farrell said. “The television students will benefit by learning from The Rebellion’s track record of award-winning work. I hope Cashman’s journalism students will be able to make use of my television experience and broaden their skills in a different type of media.”
" The students at Walpole High are so talented and I think this will be another way for them to show that talent inside the school and out in the community. " -Peter O'Farrell
This collaboration will drive more traffic to the WSMN website than what was driven to The Rebellion and Walpole Media websites individually. With a crossover between The Rebellion and Rebel TV fans, this should increase views on both articles and broadcasts. Although long-discussed, this partnership has had yet to be a reality—until now—so all organizations involved are very grateful for the opportunity to work together.
“Mr. O’Farrell and I have always talked over the years about collaborating between our programs, but the physical distance between our rooms has prevented us from actualizing this. Through our summer program we hope to kickstart a collaboration that will continue throughout the year,” Cashman said. “Thankfully, Walpole Media also believed in our vision for a collaboration.”