It’s a bright and sunny Saturday morning in Goleta, the type of weekend most teenagers might spend sleeping in or making plans with their friends. But here at Dos Pueblos High School, a group of student journalists are spending their free day at school — not for Saturday school or detention — but to prepare for an upcoming video production competition held at the Student National Television (STN) convention in Tampa Bay, Florida.
These dedicated students are part of the school's award-winning DPMedia program, made up of the school’s yearbook staff, Charger Account newspaper, and the entirely student-run broadcast DPNews. It’s a program started by adviser John Dent more than 20 years ago, which has since expanded from a small classroom to the state-of-the-art 14,000 square-foot Virgil Elings Media Arts and Communications Center opened on campus in 2024 .
In recent years, Dent and fellow program adviser Doug Caines have created a culture of success that turned DPMedia into one of the premier student-run media programs in the country. After years of attending and competing at annual conferences with thousands of other student journalists, DPNews has now become a consistent award-winner, earning recognition as one of the top broadcast shows with individual prizes in 2023 , 2024 , and 2025 .