By Nicholas Wynn
McNicholas High School launched their new student podcast, The McNick Minute, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 23. The podcast featured stories written, edited, and recorded by students on the podcast team, under staff supervisors Chelsea Almer and Matt Wehrman.
“[The podcast] gives a voice to a story,” Wehrman said. “It’s a different way of getting the news out to people, a different way of communication.”
Wehrman came up with the idea as another way to get news out to students other than the weekly newsletter or the Milestone. It rose, he said, “out of a sense of not everyone was reading the newsletter.” He thought that people might sometimes prefer listening to stories on a podcast rather than reading the stories themselves. He also thought it might be a little more convenient.
The podcast team is not connected with any class so it serves as an extracurricular activity open to all students. Wehrman said that students are also still welcome to join the team, and interested students should speak with him. Each member can work in areas including writing, interviewing, story editing, sound editing, and voicing an article. “Everyone kind of has their own bit and piece,” Wehrman said.
The first edition of The McNick Minute covered a range of topics, including Signing Day, the Radium Girls show, and a “Random Rockets” segment on what McNick is thankful for, among other topics.
The Thanksgiving Day edition was a special launch. New podcast episodes are slated to release every other week, a goal that may be altered in case of holiday breaks, technical difficulties, or other occurrences. In order to not miss an episode, students can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or the Apple Podcasts app. The podcast’s first edition is available here. New episodes will also be linked in the weekly McNicholas High School newsletter. Students can follow The McNick Minute on twitter, @McNickMinute.
In addition to the podcast team having fun, “I would like to have a good subscriber base…to see an improvement [in attendance] for events,… and just inform people,” Wehrman said.
The McNicholas Milestone 