Three Westhampton Beach High School student reporters will intern this school year with The Press

Recommend

Comment

Email this article

Print this article

Get news alerts

RSS Feeds

Share Digg Mixx Linked In Facebook Twitter Delicious

Three Westhampton Beach High School students—senior Rachel Paoletta, junior Sam Wiles and sophomore Augusta Greenbaum—will be contributing articles this year for the school news section of The Southampton Press Western Edition, and The Press of Manorville and The Moriches.

Rachel, Sam and Augusta all have an interest in journalism, and their assignments will focus on subjects that are of particular interest to high school students: the H1N1 influenza virus (more commonly known as “swine flu”); the impact of globalization on the future job market; the positives and negatives of implementing a school uniform policy; and an evaluation of the district’s current testing curriculum, to name a few.

To complete their assignments, the student reporters will interview district administrators, teachers and their fellow students. Rachel, Sam and Augusta are also to be responsible for taking their own photographs that will accompany their stories and, of course, meeting deadlines.

In addition to being the oldest, Rachel Paoletta has the most experience of the three student reporters. She studied print journalism as a sophomore and took home first place for feature writing in Newsday’s Long Island High School Journalism Contest. She has been enrolled in the high school’s broadcast journalism program for the past three years, serving as a main anchor/editor.

“I feel that if there’s one field that makes your skin thicker quickly, it’s this one,” Rachel said in an e-mail. “And it’s a beautiful, liberating feeling.”

A self-described “great storyteller,” Rachel said that her friends and classmates can always identify her from her trademark laugh, one that she said can be heard “within a 30-mile radius.” She also plays doubles on the Lady Hurricanes’ varsity tennis team and enjoys jogging. She runs every morning and describes it as a “love-hate relationship.”

In addition to getting to interview her classmates, Rachel said she is looking forward to filing stories so her grandmother can tear out the school news page and hang it “on her refrigerator door.”

Sam Wiles enrolled in the high school’s journalism program this year, explaining that he has always been interested in learning more about the field and what goes into making a newspaper. The high school junior also describes himself as an “avid amateur photographer,” a skill that will prove itself useful this school year.

Noting that he lives in East Moriches, Sam said he decided to attend Westhampton Beach because his sister went to the high school and he believed it to be the best fit for him. He plays varsity and travel volleyball, and is an active member of the Rotary Interact Club.

Sam also describes himself as “a child of the corn,” explaining that his family has been in the roasted sweet corn business since before he was born. “There are pictures of me way back when I was 2- or 3-years-old, on the back of my Dad’s pickup truck, sorting through what seemed like endless piles of corn,” Sam said in an e-mail. He added that his parents started the side business in order to build his and his sister’s college funds.

“I feel that working with my family for most of my life has taught me to have a good work ethic and to interact with people I am unfamiliar with,” Sam said.

Sophomore Augusta Greenbaum pointed out a couple of pieces of trivia: she and Jackie Kennedy share the same birthplace, Southampton Hospital, and she and her father Clint, who sits on the Westhampton Beach Board of Education, share the same birth date, October 23.

Augusta said she loves to write and her favorite subject has always been English. In fact, one of her favorite books is “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë. Augusta also enjoys singing and acting, and she has appeared in numerous school musicals. She also adores dancing, tennis and track.

When she is not studying or acting, Augusta said she has a lot of fun traveling with her family and particularly enjoys visiting New York City to go shopping and catch a Broadway show. Augusta, who is studying French, said her trip to Paris was the best so far.

Augusta said she likes reading magazines, newspapers and books, and especially enjoys fashion magazines. She said she is “crazy about fashion” and “religiously reads about designers and trends in the pages of fashion magazines, such as Vogue.” She also looks forward to Thursdays and Sundays, when the “Style Section” of The New York Times is published.

After graduation, Augusta plans to major in either literature or journalism, and hopes to eventually pursue a career in writing.