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Design
Design
For The Charger, we use Adobe InDesign and Photoshop to create page designs for each newspaper. These programs are largely unfamiliar to students before entering newspaper, and as editor-in-chief it is my job to teach my staff how to properly use these applications to design eye-catching pages. I do this through hands-on assignments in Adobe InDesign, presentations, YouTube videos, and more. As a journalist I love to write, but over the years I have grown to love the art of page design to enhance the appeal of my stories. Below are examples of page designs I have done for The Charger.
As editor-in-chief, it is my responsibility to design the front cover of the newspaper for the majority of our issues. Below are some of my favorite cover designs that I have done.
Editing
Editing
Editing is an extremely important part of newspaper, as it helps us catch errors before we publish stories and learn from our mistakes. While I do put much effort into triple-checking that all of our articles and page designs are free of errors, I also try my hardest to give constructive criticism to my staff. Each month I create a schedule to keep our staff on track to publish our monthly issue before the end of the month. This schedule includes edits due from the editors of each section, as well as the associate editors and myself, and a "big edit" day. On a "big edit" day we print out all 16 pages of the newspaper, and the entire staff looks over each one for design or article errors.
This is a screenshot from one of our monthly spreadsheets that keeps the newspaper organized. In this table you can see each deadline and when edits are due from section editors and myself. I also use this same spreadsheet to keep track of the status of each article (complete, edited, etc.). Every month, some students are given extensions if their article is under special circumstances. As editor-in-chief, it is my job to approve extensions and keep track of when those extended deadlines are.
During our first round of editing, editors leave comments on Google Docs. I try to make sure that all of my Google Doc comments are constructive criticism that uplift my staff instead of frustrate them. Writers then go through the comments and fix any mistakes made in their article. Then, editors re-read the article a second time to ensure that all edits made by our staff writers were also correctly done.
The day before sending our newspaper to press, The Charger staff prints out all pages and marks them up for any article and design mistakes. The above picture is from our April/May 2024 big edit, displaying how we mark any errors and then give the corrections to the designer.
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