Art can take many different forms. From paintings to sculptures to writing, there are so many different things that qualify as art. That would mean that schools should assign fine art credits to a wide range of activities, right? Wrong. Despite the extensive creativity and meaningfulness that goes into the Jaguar Media program, it still does not receive a fine art credit. Jaguar Media should be qualified to receive a fine art credit for participation in the class. 

A fine art is a creative art, especially visual art, whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content. By that definition, each program in Jaguar Media is qualified to be a fine art.

The yearbook team definitely has to be creative when creating Heritage’s yearbook, The Rosette. It takes countless hours of both writing and formatting to even piece the yearbook together. Not only does the yearbook staff have to make the yearbook practical, but it also has to look pretty. While it is true that the yearbook is just a book, it’s a lot more than that.  Artistic elements including colors, shapes, and designs are incorporated into the yearbook to make it visually pleasing and something that you want to keep for years to come.

AV, or audio-visual production, takes a combination of imagination and intellect to create a video presentation that is enjoyable to viewers. No one wants to watch something that they’ve seen countless times before, so AV team has to think of new ideas, create a plan of how to implement those ideas, and then execute their plan in a way that’s both creative and visually pleasing. 

Photography is most definitely a fine art. There are entire art galleries dedicated to pictures and photographs. Photography incorporates all aspects of art in a way that has to both be aesthetically pleasing and creative. Pictures are taken to capture moments in a unique way that tells the story of Heritage. Space, color, value, and symmetry are just a few of the ways that photography incorporates artistic elements. 

It has been said that writing is not necessarily an art, but The Roar, our school newspaper, should be considered part of the fine arts. Writing in and of itself includes the intellectual and imaginative content that defines the fine arts, but the newspaper is not just writing. The Roar includes images, videos, and the actual look of the website itself. We may not be physically having to cut and move around articles like with print newspapers, but there is still designing and arranging that happens behind the scenes. Newspaper is an art. A different kind of art, maybe, but art nonetheless. 

When you take all aspects of the Jaguar Media program and combine them together, it is definitely a fine art. Jaguar Media deserves to have a fine art credit awarded to its staff. Journalism is a fine art, and it’s time that it be recognized as such.