Editing, Leadership and Team Building
Being on staff and working together as a team with my staffers has been one of my favorite parts of journalism. I love celebrating staff birthdays with their "birthday buddy" and staying after school during themed press days, even if I leave at 8 p.m. My favorite approach to being a leader on staff is to uplift our writers and make sure that they can be successful during our rigorous schedule and process. While it can be frustrating trying to reteach someone something for the second or fifth time, I know that with my guidance and help, our staffers will be more confident working on their own the next time.
Master List, Google Calendar and Process
While it might look crazy to some, the master list is the method to our madness. Each of the stories for each quarter is color-coded after completion, green meaning on time, going down to red which means not turned in. The master list helps me see trends from each of our staffers, and I can easily see who has been turning in stories more than a week late consistently and needs more help from me with planning or interviewing. Something new I wanted to include this year was a formal pitch. During my time as an intern at the Harvard Crimson, we would have biweekly pitch meetings about what stories would be posted when, and what stories I would be helping with. Previously, we would have staffers turn in story ideas and check over their plans to make sure they were on the right track, but I thought it would be best for us to start implementing a pitch into our process, specifically for our larger, enhanced feature stories For all enhanced stories, I require a pitch to make sure that the writers know exactly the angle of their story and prepare all components of their story before they fully begin a draft, so I know what to expect out of their story, and they can receive helpful feedback.
Our Google Calendar is our go-to resource for seeing what stories are posting during that particular week, and also for us to make sure that we have one story from every category (news, features, opinion and sports) going up during the week. The Google Calendar is also really useful to adjust certain post dates, like if an enhanced story needs to be moved back due to a staffer being ill, or if an event gets rescheduled. At the start of every week, we always "circle up" to discuss what everybody will be working on that week, and I always direct section editors before or during the circle to 1. look at the calendar and 2. make sure to be actively listening during the discussion so they can be sure to check in with whoever is writing the stories posting that week in their section.
Classroom Morale
This year I’ve put a lot of emphasis on boosting classroom morale and cultivating a positive classroom environment. Over the summer the journalism classroom moved to a completely different building, and we had all new furniture and computers installed into our room. This effectively made our collaboration much easier, as we have a completely open design, rather than rows of tables. We also have a separate room at the back of our classroom, which we conveniently call “the back room,” where we put our podcasting equipment, editor chairs and yearbook photo backdrops. The back room has been really helpful with facilitating one-on-one conversations, and being our designated pitch space. At the start of the year Mr. Taylor and I decided that we needed to add more elements to our new classroom, so we decided to get a bell for our students to ring whenever their story posts. As the student rings the bell, our entire class cheers and celebrates their hard work!
Press Day and Celebrations
As print editor last year, I was in charge of designing our press day themes in collaboration with yearbook, like Pajama Day and Five Nights at Freddy's, Cowboy Carter and more. While staying after school can be grueling, I always make sure I am the last one to leave, so I am able to go over all of the progress that got made during that specific day, print off new printouts and mark up pages that need to be edited. I always make sure that we have adequate celebrations for milestones, like getting all of our SNO Distinguished Site Badges, getting Pacemaker or Pacemaker Finalist, getting a crown at CSPA and more, so that way our staff knows that their hard work does not go unnoticed nor without celebration!
Editing Process
To make our editing process as clear as possible, we made a presentation going over who should be editing what kinds of stories. We also attach this slideshow to our Canvas assignments, so if people are confused on who they are supposed to share their stories with, they can check there as well.
Communication
Our main form of communication is Group Me. We update each other about when our stories are ready for edits, once edits are completed and give other updates in the chat about group events, activities and general reminders.
Edit Examples
My job as editor-in-chief is to make sure all of my staff members are producing quality content. I edit everything that gets posted on our website, from written articles, podcast episodes, videos and providing feedback on photos. Above shows some examples of comments that I leave on documents for the writer to adjust or change. I am the sole editor who reviews podcasts and videos, going through multiple rounds of edits, to make sure that our staffers are producing the best version of their content. For multimedia, I point out issues in things like audio, focus and framing, while providing tips on where voiceover is necessary. For podcasting, I provide edits on where to cut out weird sounds, to shorten or lengthen an outro and give tips for my staffers on how to be better for the next episode. Since we had so many new staff members this year, I provided detailed feedback on how they could improve their work and about AP style formatting for their articles, so they could reference my notes while reworking that story, and using it as a resource for their next articles.
Team building
One of my favorite ways of team building and bonding is by attending conferences and planning events. Mr. Taylor has nicknamed me the "seasoned vet," as I've attended every conference I possibly could during the three years I've been on staff, and I'm always the leader showing the new people where to go and what happens during the different parts of the event. While attending CSPA in New York City last year was wonderful because of the overall experience, my favorite conferences I've attended have definitely been FSPA and NSPA 2024 in Kansas City because of the ability to meet new people and learn from the masterclass sessions. I'm looking forward to attending FSPA with my staff and extended yearbook family, and a new conference this year, Student Television Network, with my news editor Holly, opinion editor Lia and my staff reporter Faith, so we can learn more about broadcast and video!
Presentations
The past two years of the FSPA D3 Workshop, I presented a presentation on our staff's story writing process to 50+ people each time. Last year, I presented with Nadia, our former editor-in-chief, and this year I wanted to present with a new staffer, Elleigh, who is now one of my features editors. Giving this presentation helped me connect with other staffs and address issues that they might be having with story writing or staff operations, giving them tips on how to eliminate those issues and be successful in the future.
