Leesville’s newspaper — for those who don’t know — is called The Mycenaean, as voted on by the students of Leesville in 1993, after Mr. Paul “Dink” Dinkenor proposed.
The Mycenaean, or Mycenae (if you’re being fancy) was a city in ancient Greece, and the entrance to said city was known as “The Lion Gate.”
The following was not mentioned in the 1993 article, but I’ll mention it here. The Mycenaean civilization established a writing style known as the Mycenaean Linear B script.
The Greeks used this script for many centuries, but it’s appropriate: The Mycenaeans established a writing style, and many newspaper staff members explore new ways of writing in class.
You can also see the comparison in the original article — “The Mycenaean was a lion gate in ancient Greece. In modern Leesville High, it is the gateway to our school. Now if we could only learn how to spell it!”
Hence, Dink proposed the idea in the vote for the name of the newspaper, and a majority voted for what we have today.
All of the issues featured in this article as well as all of the issues up until about 2014 are located in the media center. Just ask them to show you where they are, and they’ll be happy to show you.
The issues in the ‘93 issue also struck me as a bit funny and ironic.
For example, the image to the right shows an article about how smoking — as in cigarettes — had been an issue at Leesville.
Now, we see the vapes as a pressing issue, causing fire alarms that cause inconvenience, and taking time out of class to go outside, the fire department show up, and then get everyone back inside.
This is just the first issue of The Mycenaean. With an issue every semester, or twice a year, there was bound to be something recognizable in these older issues. There was a pretty big story in volume 9 in 2001 doing just that.
In the image to the left, what can be seen is a rough plan of the Richard Murphy building, to be built in 2004.
If you look close, you can see there are actually statements from Murphy himself, as he was the principal at this time.
It’s just crazy to look back at these older issues and connect to current events at Leesville.
Now obviously the building doesn’t look exactly like the photo, but it was really cool to see the sketch as a student now and recognize “The Murphy” almost immediately.
The headlines of some of the older papers were printed in color, something exclusive now to the senior issue.
Another big addition to the newspaper that we think of as just an everyday part of print edition today is the double truck.
The first double truck — at least that I could find, and I flipped through every single one — was in volume 6, in 1998.
There is a lot of white space on this page, but for the time, creating something like this in a print page was new and exciting.
The blankness doesn’t draw your eye either, it’s drawn to the artwork. That’s the purpose of the page.
Senior issue also underwent some changes. The map used to be on one page, but is now on two — one for NC and one schools outside NC; however, that could be attributed to the sheer number of students in this graduating class as compared to the earlier graduating classes.
There also used to be senior wills — seniors would write out their “last will and testament,” but everybody knows each other so well now, mostly due to social media, that senior wills just died off.
The website changes all the time as well. Each new website editor has their own new ideas for how they think the website should look, and each year, they design a new website.
Doing so allows us to bring our content to you in the most efficient and visually pleasing way possible, because elements of our content change, there are videos, articles, instagram reels, and more all displayed on our website this year.
Last year, however, you would have to navigate to our Instagram or Tiktok pages to find that content as opposed to it being presented to you immediately upon visiting the website.
The Mycenaean has come a long way since 1993, and we change all the time! With new staff writers and editors each semester, the diversity of Leesville gets to really shine through the newspaper.
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