How To Produce A School Newspaper

How to produce a High School Newspaper

Coordinating a high school newspaper staff and creating a news paper is a lot of fun, but on the other hand, it involves a lot of frustrations. Much goes into producing a high school; newspaper, but most important is the ability to manage and organize a group of people within a allotted amount of time. Patience is also crucial in order to understand and help other staff members. However, when it's completed, the satisfaction is its own reward.

Before understanding the entire newspaper production process, there are a few key people whose duties rely heavily on it. The editor-in-chief is the actual "big cheese" or "head honcho." As the editor-in chief, it was my job to organize and lead the class during every issue to produce a newspaper. This stressful position required good leadership skills, and production skills since the other staff members depended on me, the editor-in-chief, to direct them. The advisor is usually a teacher who doesn't actually run the class, but advises the editor-in-chief when needed. Section editors have the duty of laying out each page in their section. Some section editors have assistants to help them, but most don't because they usually only have two to three pages.

Reporters are the glue in the process. Everything relies on their story and the deadlines the meet. Their main duty is to meet the deadlines. If a reporter misses a deadline, or they or late, then the entire production process gets held back. For instance, if a story is not ready, the section editor can't layout the page without a story; the photographer can't size the picture onto without a story on it; the advisor can't finalize that page until it is completed with a picture and a story on it; and finally, the editor-in-chief can't take the paper to the press without pages finalized. So, everything that happens revolves around the reporter and his/her story. The second duty of a reporter is to write a story interesting enough so that the readers will read it. There is no point to writing a story just to take up space. If that were the case, then the efforts (of the entire class) would be meaningless.

Two days after the first deadline, second deadline is scheduled. This is when all stories are supposed to be turned in to the section editors with all the mistakes corrected from the first deadline editing. Also, the photographers must have three-fourths of the pictures done at this time so the section editors can begin to layout the pages. At this time the photos must be printed and available so the section editors can place picture boxes, captions and headlines.

Final deadline is next, usually one day after the second deadline. Reporters only get one day after second deadline because their stories are expected to be done by this time with only minor grammatical mistakes for the advisor to catch. Now, the advisor meets with each individual reporter to finalize their story. In order for a story to be finalized,