The Morning Howl is a very important part of Aliso Niguel that has been around since the school’s opening in 1993. The Morning Howl is a weekly news broadcasting show run by Mr. Ohnstad and a select few of his TV broadcast journalism students. Students can find a new release of the Morning Howl during Wolverine Plus on Fridays.
As a part of TV broadcast journalism, the Morning Howl is posted not only as a canvas announcement schoolwide, but also on YouTube.
Mr. Ohnstad, teacher and advisor to the Morning Howl for the past 16 years says, “My favorite part about the Morning Howl is showing the student activities like the sports that are going on and the school performances, like the plays and the orchestra concerts and the band concerts and just things that are going on outside of the classroom for extracurricular activities and making it so that these programs have an audience.”
The Morning Howl is truly a great way to familiarize yourself with broadcast journalism, whether you’re watching or participating. In fact, if a student is interested in trying broadcast journalism, they should definitely consider taking the TV broadcast journalism elective and helping to make the weekly Morning Howl.
The way that the TV broadcast journalism class is set up is as a combination class alongside Mr. Ohnstad’s video production class. For these classes to produce a broadcast each week, they require a lot of discipline and strict schedules.
Mr. Ohnstad says, “The students in TV broadcast journalism on Mondays, they write the stories for the Morning Howl, and then on Tuesdays, they shoot footage for the Morning Howl, and on Thursdays, they create the graphics for the Morning Howl.”
This only emphasizes the strict schedule set by the Morning Howl. However, don’t let this discourage you from trying it out; although they have strict scheduling, most students actually find it quite fun.
Another reason to consider taking a chance at the Morning Howl is the personal rewards you can gain from it. Not only will working on the Morning Howl give you a lot of disciplinary experience needed in the real world, but also versatility in knowledge of subject matter in general, as well as help you make decisions on what you want to do in college based on your experience in the electives you try.
On the other hand, for the observers, the Morning Howl is a great way to stay informed about upcoming school events. Most of the time, people don’t even know when games for certain sports are happening, so the Morning Howl works to prevent that and inform people of upcoming events so that students won’t have to miss out on events they may be interested in.
To all the students who like to go to school events and support the school, or just like having a reason to go out, watching the Morning Howl is a great opportunity to do all of those things, as they announce events weekly and if you hear one you may be interested in, you now have a reason to get out of the house with your friends and have fun.
The Morning Howl, like many other school-based electives, is extremely under-appreciated and should get the attention it truly deserves for all that it does for us at Aliso Niguel. Luckily, the Morning Howl will continue to post their weekly updates for the foreseeable future.
