About
Creek Compass news website is an independent, public forum publication run by and for students at Caney Creek High School as a product of the Caney Creek Student Media program. Caney Creek opened in 1996 as Conroe ISD’s fourth high school located in Conroe near Grangerland, Texas in unincorporated east Montgomery County. The goal of cchscompass.com is to tell the stories within Caney Creek High School and to entertain and inform the student body, parents and community. Since 1997, Creek Compass (print edition) has been a popular read among students. In 2013, we launched a news website with the goal and mission of the new format is to be able to share information with readers as events happen.
CHANGES OVER TIME
Starting in the 2019-2020 school year, Leadership Council voted to transition from a splintered group of publications where the newspaper and yearbook staffs worked separately and competitively, to one organization: Caney Creek Student Media. Rather than staff members working as backpack journalists and having to produce entire pages and spreads from start to finish, staff now operates in specialized jobs. Students now choose to work full-time as reporters, designers, photojournalists, multimedia journalists, marketing team members, or editorial leadership. Not only does this streamline production and prevent the two groups from double-reporting the same content, but also better reflects trends in the modern industry. Media outlets provide a wide range of products created by staff members trained in specialized areas.
In the 2022-2023 school year, the Leadership Council of the Student Media staff formally voted to rename the print and web editions of the newspaper from The Prowler to Creek Compass to better reflect journalistic values and ethics, as well as to better reflect the purpose of the product. The newspaper was originally named On the Prowl before becoming The Prowler. The students believe that the word “prowler” has negative connotations in general, but especially when it comes to journalism. Journalists, we believe, should not prowl, but working in tandem with the community to produce news it needs and wants. A compass is designed to help point people in the right direction and the journalism products do the same.
Also starting in the 2022-2023 school year, Student Media expanded to be even more in line with industry practices by adding two departments. In addition to the three journalistic products, Student Media now includes the commercial photography and broadcast production staffs. The commercial photography students will provide services wanted by the school community that do not align with journalistic standards. While not journalistic in nature, the commercial photography program addition does align with industry standards where many media outlets do provide commercial services. Similarly, the broadcast production staff has been in operation since the school’s opening as KPAN. By joining the CCSM umbrella, the broadcast department will continue to produce the KPAN news broadcast, but be able to utilize the resources and content of the yearbook and news department, and vice versa. Starting in 2022-2023, the broadcast department also added Panther Productions — a sketch comedy production shown on Friday in classes to better split the functions of KPAN, which had previously begun to incorporate less journalistic content.
