Whether a person is an editor, photographer, reporter, copy editor or designer, they must continuously work together with other people fulfilling their roles and staying on deadline. That’s the key to creating and maintaining a great newspaper.
Though everyone on staff needs to write at least one article every edition, reporters write two. Their job is to report about the school and interview students to write interesting, quality articles. It may seem easy to write two articles every month, but sometimes, there are complications.
“It’s hard to create new ideas that don’t feel like re-words of articles that you have done,” said senior reporter Azzy Bennett. However, with the help of class brainstorming, new ideas can be shared to inspire new and fun article ideas.
When drafts are ready to be edited, articles are taken to the copy editors. Copy editors work on correcting all articles for “The Stampede.” They search for errors within the articles, such as grammatical, punctuation, formatting and citation mistakes. With three rounds of editing plus the final draft, copy editors must stay on top of editing others’ drafts.
Junior Payton Grant, who serves as a team leader for the copy editors, explained the importance of the role: “As a copy editor, we take articles from other people in the class and edit them for any mistakes or issues that affect the flow of the article,” she said. “We look to make the article the best quality it can be. [However,] sometimes copy editors make incorrect edits that accidentally get published.” Though mistakes happen, additional editing after uploading day can fix those errors.
Photographers also play an important part in the newspaper, providing quality photos, accompanied by captions, for articles in “The Stampede.”
“We get assigned two to three articles on top of our own [article] to take photos for,” said junior photographer Sam Trudersheim. Whether it’s finding a good angle or a location to stop and take a photo, these photographers take time out of their days to try to provide professional-level images that make articles stand out for readers.
Designers have the task of designing “The Stampede” website, which includes adding features like graphics, statistics, weather updates and more. Their busiest days are always upload days, where they work on uploading each article to the website, along with their coordinating pictures. Communication through the publication process is necessary for the designers.
“I get to communicate with a lot of people… it’s really fun to talk to people,” said designer Emma Phillips.
Editors have the role of overlooking the class and making sure that everything runs smoothly through both the drafting and uploading process. Whether it’s helping grade photos, updating the class bulletin board, or fixing small mistakes on the website, editors work hard daily to assist students in the class.
“The editors are amazing, because they basically run the class… they are leading the class, helping others with their work [and] they can sub for me when I am gone,” said teacher Kate Lester.
Being a staff member for the newspaper requires time, commitment, motivation, positivity, helpfulness, communication and most of all, enthusiasm to help connect all the editors, photographers, designers and reporters together to create a great newspaper.
“I notice that I have really highly motivated kids that bring a lot of positivity and joy to the classroom; it makes my job really fun,” Lester said.
For students interested in taking newspaper, see Lester in room S202 for information on prerequisite classes and additional information.
