Editing, Leadership & Team Building
Media Now, Design Editing, Opinion Editor & News Lab Family
Editorial Leadership
Media Now at Drake University
Editorial Leadership
Over the past summer I attended Drake University's Media Now camp, where journalists from all over take single-track classes to improve their skills in the field. As a new editor, I decided to apply for the Editorial Leadership class, led by Sarah Nichols, in order to improve my leadership skills and learn from other publications. I made friends across Iowa, Missouri and more places, but my classmates taught me a lot about how to lead a team. I learned about different mindsets, leadership skills, building a culture, management of projects, feedback and more. At the end of the camp, I helped lead our group to create a plan for the chalk event. We planned ahead of time on our overall idea, representation and timeline of our chalk square. In the end of the camp, I earned the award Excellence in Editorial Leadership for my products in my final project and taking on leadership roles within our class. I use what I learned at this camp to better my own class as well as adjust my leadership to the people in my design group and the staff as a whole.
Design Editing
I work to prepare, aid and produce designs that my designers are proud of and represent the stories that are told in the writing. One struggle this year I've gone through is having over half of the designers on staff graduate the previous year, leaving us with six members. I worked on recruiting other writers to try their hand at designing, trying to merge the gap between designing and writing in our class. Now, four others have tried designing with two finding a passion in it.
Before the beginning of this year, I made certain edits to the process of designing to smooth our production from last year. Due to having a smaller group, we have one group circle where we all comment on each other's designs during rounds one and two. I created a Design folder in the newspaper folder to provide easy access to resources such as the Indesign Library, Design Style Guide, checklists and more. We also utilize Trello to share designs, but this year I added writers to the Trello board so they can access the designs easily to communicate with designers more often.
My assistant design editor and I also make sure to have one-on-one meetings with our designers at the end of cycles. This allows for them to privately communicate their concerns and problems from the cycle and what they plan to achieve or take on in the next cycle. We also check in if there are any external issues that affected their cycle and what we can do to help.
We also make sure to have boot camps available at the beginning of the year to review our policies and cycles with old and new staff members. I made up two, one for design and one for opinions. In the design slide I introduced myself and went over some reminders and changes to the design guides. For the opinion slides, I went over the difference in opinion writing for new staff and what is expected when pitching one. I also reviewed editorial board members' expectations for the year.
Opinion Editor
As opinion editor I oversee the opinion section as well as the Editorial Board. I'm in charge of creating a google form for editorial ideas that our editors submit. I then go through the process of adding them to the dock, sorting out ideas and doing research for topics I know little about or have not heard about. I narrow down the topic choices to around three to five. I then schedule a meeting with the Editorial Board where we go around and say our thoughts about the best one to cover and additional information I write down in the meeting notes. We then go through a vote and decide on a primary writer, determining our angle more precisely at our next meeting. I then work with the writers for the opinion and editorial pieces, teaching my assistant opinion editor along the way.
Staff Family
Overall I work closely with our EIC, Zaira Ahmad, to ensure that print newspapers are running efficiently and mitigating issues that have cropped up. We often spend time over what is needed to ensure our staff can produce their stories and designs in a timely manner. We work to keep staff traditions alive, such as the West Side Story wedding or themed days such as Fun Friday or Tasty Tuesday, to provide rewards and rests for our hardworking staff. I work closely with Ms. Whittaker to provide help to the other sections of West Side Story, such as aiding Yearbook in Indesign and Photoshop functions or teaming up with Broadcast Lab to produce timely news and visual stories. I always make sure to attend staff bonding events created by our Social Committee to engage with staff members I don't see on a daily basis.
Wellness Wednesdays
Since the beginning of this year, I've led Wellness Wednesdays for the print staff. For the first couple minutes of class, I lead them through some stretching and breathing exercises to help loosen and calm my classmates.
Question of the Week
I've kept alive the Question of the Week whiteboard, where all three classes can write their response to the new question I've written for the week. I also respond to my own prompt to encourage responses.
Newsroom
Each lunch I spend in the newsroom to help keep our space clean and organized. I believe that our best work can only be done when there isn't a mess around us. I often clean tables, push the rolling chairs back to the computers and generally clean the room.