By Cassidy Johnson
Every student and faculty member at Apopka High School is familiar with it, but few truly know it. The DNN or Darter News Network has been a staple of the Apopka High experience for over two decades. It delivers important announcements and keeps us entertained at the start of the day. The DNN is as important as it is prominent. Its maintenance and success are the results of the hard work done by one begrudging man: Tom Scahill.
Both Mr. Scahill and the DNN started out in the drama department. Even before the theme park was opened, Universal Studios invited Apopka High and other schools in the area to participate in a film competition. “We actually won first place, which was kind of amazing,” Mr. Scahill explained. That coupled with the start of a video yearbook would eventually inspire a new idea. In 1993, Mr. Scahill and his students were asked if they could create something that would broadcast to the whole school. “It was really rough. We were in a closet on the main campus. You would have to squeeze in – there was one camera, but it did finally go out to the school.” The DNN really started to catch fire in the next few years when they got a studio on the Ninth Grade Campus. Now at the new campus, Mr. Scahill has his own studio with a green screen, computer lab, classroom, and office. He says, “It all started with drama kids, and then moved into TV kids, and separated completely.”
Mr. Scahill is a favorite among many students and teachers at Apopka. His age and wisdom do not compromise a brutal sense of humor; this man tells it like it is. As good a person as he is to go to when you need a laugh, he’s just as good at giving advice. Senior Sasha Rolle has been a student of Scahill’s all four years of high school and has been a member of the DNN for the last three. When asked to give her thoughts on him she said, “Between allowing you to create the videos that you want – within reason – and giving you full autonomy over the broadcast, Scahill is the best teacher a student could ever ask for.” When Mr. Scahill started out he had no idea that the Darter News Network would last this long. Anyone can go to YouTube and watch all the old broadcast tapings that have posted online up to this school year. Scahill admitted, “You have to thank all the kids that were there for the early years and got it going.”
Some students have noticed that all DNN tapings actually take place the day before the broadcast. This is done every day with the exception of Spirit Week. Some time ago all tapings of the DNN were broadcasted across campus live. Ever since a particular incident, live tapings have brought on a measure of apprehension because of one former student, Josh Pesh. “It was the end of the year and Josh Pesh got very emotional, he was saying goodbye to the seniors and he was a senior too. He was saying things like ‘You mean all the world to me’ and ‘I love you.’ And then he says, ‘I’m f@$*ing gonna miss you.’ And we all just went (gasp). And that kind of made us not want to do live anymore.”
DNN kids are normally recruited from Scahill’s Theatre, Film & Cinema classes. This has grown more difficult over the years as the implementation of EOCs has restructured his TV 1 classes. Mr. Scahill now has limited opportunity to determine which students have an innate talent for the camera and which ones are able to work well with him and under his instruction. He asks, “If you can’t work with me, and I’m it . . . What are you gonna do?”
As a former member of the DNN, I speak from experience when I say that the class is a lot more than sitting in front of a camera and reading from a teleprompter. It’s more than making silly videos. It’s about keeping the student body informed and providing them a few minutes of joy every morning. Messages people wish to convey become visual art. Fun is in every part of the class, but that fun is yielded by hard work and dedication.