All spreads need diversity in race and ethnicity. It is surprisingly VERY easy to end up with a spread that is dominant with white students. To avoid that, I try to remind groups about covering different races/ethnicities when I notice that a spread is looking a bit white. 

Having a somewhat equal amount of photos of each gender is crucial to a spread. Similar to race & ethnicity, assuring that a spread gets equal amounts of boys and girls is harder than it seems. Often, our staff hesitates to reach out to the opposite gender for an interview, resulting in a girl-dominant spread or a boy-dominant spread. 

Unfortunately, this is also something that I just have to be patient and keep reminding our staff about, and not something we could try to fix systematically. 

The dead list usually consists of a list of students who have been featured in the book multiple times. Students on the dead list are usually close friends of our staff since close friends are the easiest to get content from. 

Although we don't have a physical list of the dead list, as an editor who has looked at each spread at least ten times, I have a pretty good sense of students who would be on the dead list. 

Occasionally, I tell our staff "Don't interview ?? because ?? have been featured too much already." I don't say this to try to get in the way of our staff getting interviews, but so that we can cover more students who haven't had the chance to be in the book yet.