Editing, Leadership, & Teambuilding

Leadership & Teambuilding

Through my five years on staff as section editor, photography editor, managing editor, and editor-in-chief, I've learned that, to create a strong publication, it's important to create a welcoming environment for your staff. Since my first year, I have strived to give staff the resources they need to succeed and make the class as fun as possible.

Before the year even starts, I try to meet with the editors of both the yearbook and the newspaper to communicate any changes and goals for the year. This is also where I ask them to come up with icebreaker games. Each editor must come up with a game that we play for the first week. Some of these games include Two Truths and a Lie, Heads Up Seven Up, a Photo Scavenger Hunt, or a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament.

I also create a form for staff to fill out telling me about themselves. I ask about their birthdays and favorite candy (so I can leave them a little treat and card), allergies, other commitments/ involvements, contact information, and more.

Myself, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, and the managing editor of the newspaper collaborated to create a snack corner that students can help themselves to, which includes snacks, a microwave, and a Keurig.

In the first few weeks, I give a presentation on photography and captioning writing. These resources are available to the staff year-round in our Google Drive.

Photography

Caption writing

We also have a "Journalist of the Week" award where we recognize staff members who go above and beyond their responsibilities.

On Fallon Fridays (which is every Friday!), we watch a clip of Jimmy Fallon before starting our work for the day. It's a great way to wrap up the week.

Editing

Fun fact: I've been an editor since my first year of yearbook in eighth grade and have only gained more responsibilities as time went on. Needless to say, I've got a lot of experience with editing.

Because we don't have very many returning students, I've had to pick up a section to edit on top of editing everything else this year. Every year I try to take note of what works and what doesn't to make proper adjustments for the next year, and I've got it down to a science at this point.

I keep an Excel document where editors mark off what is complete on a page whether that be captions, photos, story, etc. There is also room for us to type up what exactly is missing (i.e. missing caption for dominant photo). Editors are assigned a group of pages to check off, and then write notecards with questions for interviews to give to staff members. This is a great way to utilize staff that have already completed their work while allowing editors to continue editing or work on their own pages. Just this year I converted the system from five different excel documents to one document with multiple pages for each deadline and the ladder for convenience.

Whenever possible, we try to show corrections to the staff members and have them correct it before intervening so they learn for the future.

I also keep a tally on the side of how many pages are ready to submit and how many we need. Different colors indicate status of pages.

Yellow means that it is ready for proofs, but not publication, green means good for publication/submitted for proofs, blue means it has been finally submitted, and red means the page needs urgent help.

As the editor-in-chief, I create a calendar of deadlines posted for all staff, and then a more specific one for editor deadlines. This ensures that the staff gets their pages to editors in time for them to review them and get them to me in time for myself and Smale (our adviser) to submit them. This also makes sure that pages are being completed enough to meet our deadlines.

When we get our proofs back, first I go through them. I circle mistakes, write corrections, and enter them into the Excel sheet. Then we leave them out so staff can look at not only their own pages and corrections, but others as well. They can leave feedback on other pages too.

Also view my winning MIPA Staff Challenge plan for more details.