SUN shines on Sunset High School

Getting news from Sunset High School just got a lot easier, and now it's on camera. Sunset seniors Erin Koval and Erin Roman have taken the initiative to create Sunset High School's very first broadcast network.

"Erin and I have always been interested in pursuing broadcast journalism as a career, and so bringing our aspirations to Sunset was something that we had always dreamed of," said Koval.

In addition to writing for their school newspaper for two years, both Koval and Roman have experience in broadcasting. "I have participated in broadcasting programs ever since I was in elementary school and was bummed to find out that Sunset didn't have a broadcasting team," said Roman. "And I took a broadcast journalism course at Emerson College over the summer," said Koval.

Koval and Roman took matters into their own hands this last summer to raise enough funds to buy their initial camera and microphone. "We designed business cards and stood outside Safeway trying to pitch the idea to shoppers for donations for over three hours," said Koval. "At the end of the day we had raised over $300, enough to get the program rolling."

Since that day, Koval and Roman have filmed, edited, done interviews and anchoring, and have produced five broadcasts for the SUN (Sunset Universal News) Network.

"We try our best to cover everything going on in the Sunset community, from band to sports to administration and even local news," said Roman. "It's a lot of work, but we love what we do and our hard work has paid off."

The young broadcasters pitched their broadcasting idea to Sunset Boosters last week and received a substantial amount of money from the school.

"It's really nice to see that the whole school is behind making the broadcast program a reality. With the money from boosters we will be able to buy all new equipment and hopefully get some more students working behind the scenes with us," said Koval. She and Roman plan to smooth out all the bumps in the program so that next year when they go off to college, other Sunset students will continue to build onto the program. "We really want kids to have the opportunity to fall in love with broadcast journalism like Erin and I did," said Koval. "It fills our hearts to know that we are making Sunset an even better school."

As things progress, Sunset plans to air the SUN Network broadcasts throughout the school at least once a month. You can watch the shows on the Sunset SUN Facebook page (facebook.com and enter Sunset SUN in the search box).

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