Editing, Leadership and Team Building

I earned the position of Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Howler during my senior year, though I began taking on the responsibilities during the second semester of my junior year. In this role, I help maintain the standards of our publication while guiding new and returning staff members.

As Co-Editor-in-Chief, I helped organize and lead our annual “bootcamp” during the first two weeks of school. With my partner, I designed and presented lessons on AP Style, ethical journalism, sourcing, and the fundamentals of news writing. I also led discussions on newsworthy content and interviewing techniques, ensuring that new staff writers felt prepared and confident.

Moreover, I prioritize team building in my leadership role. When assembling groups for our first issue, I intentionally paired returning staff members with new writers to create built-in mentorships. This helped new members feel welcomed and supported while also encouraging collaboration across the classroom. Throughout the year, I also lead pitch board meetings, helping writers brainstorm, refine, and develop strong story ideas.

On the editing side, I serve as the final editor for articles before submission to our adviser. In this role, I focus not only on grammar and AP Style but also on structure, ethical reporting, and strong sourcing. Here, I can provide detailed feedback to help writers strengthen their voices while maintaining the integrity of our publication, which has earned awards from the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association each year I’ve been on staff.

In addition to the awards pictured above, NCSMA provides feedback on many areas of our newspaper. The comments to the right are from the "Writing and Editing" section of the competition we submitted to. As you can see, our headline writing is praised as well as the cleanliness of our publications. As the Co-Editor-in-Chief, I am always encouraging writers to maintain the rules of AP Style, but to also have fun in areas like their headlines, which is applauded in this feedback.

Editing

Here is a sample of an article I recently conducted the final edits for. As you can see, I edit the story to adhere to AP Style guidelines as well as check for grammatical standards like using the correct tense.

Here are some of the other comments I left on this writer's story. Repetition is something I always try to tackle, telling writers to find another way to share something. Powerful verbs are another edit I look out for. I want our publication's stories to be engaging!

Here is part of an AP Style Quiz my Co-Editor-in-Chief and I made to give to writers. We noticed that writers were consistently making many of the same mistakes, so we decided to quiz them on those specific areas. For example, we made a question about quote attribution, which we had been making many edits for. We also met with the section editors and asked what issues they had been seeing on their side. This collaboration helped us target the areas that needed to be assessed. Before the quiz, we made sure to review with students! Afterwards, we had to make significantly fewer edits for AP Style errors.

This is a sample of one month of our class calendar. Here I plan dates for our pitch board session, all the way through the pink slip due date. This helps me to plan the editing schedule. We will put these due dates on the whiteboard in the classroom so writers know when each of their drafts is to be turned in. My Co-Editor-in-Chief and I are responsible for planning these dates and adjusting them when we have days off from school.

Leadership

This is what our pitch board document looks like. Pitch board is our essential "brainstorming" session before we begin the writing process. At the beginning of every issue we will all sit together in a circle and share what we want to cover for our assigned section. This is also a time for us to share ideas for writers who may be unsure of what to write. My favorite part of pitch board is seeing all of my classmates get excited to help each other refine their story ideas. My Co-Editor-in-Chief and I lead these sessions and will approve story topics as well as give suggestions.

This is the Photography and Graphics Editing Slip, which I created this year. We needed an updated system where writers can get their photo ideas approved before they then turn in their picture to be approved/edited by either our Photography Editor or Graphics Editor. Here, writers simply put their idea, the date they will get the picture, and any important comments for editors. This system has worked well, ensuring good quality graphics and pictures accompany each of the stories on our website.

This is our "Helpful Resources" Google Drive folder, where writers can find an array of materials to make their lives easier. Here we keep our editing slips for each issue, a contact sheet for everyone on staff, informative slideshows, and anything else needed for writing.

Here are samples from a few slideshows I made to present during our "bootcamp" at the beginning of the year. These are available for writers to look back on and are in our "Helpful Resources" folder. I covered topics from making graphics to finding newsworthy content, to crediting photos correctly (including making a Creative Commons usage guide). These presentations were done before we began our first issue. This way, anyone new on staff was taught the basics of journalistic writing before they began to write on their own. I have found that these slideshows were also a good refresher for returning staff members.

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This is an instructional video that my Co-Editor-in-Chief and I created. We explained the components of a strong editorial. This video was shown to all of the English II classes at our school. The students then had to write their own editorial for the class, using our video as directions.

Team Building

We have a staff GroupMe group chat where I will send out reminders about important dates or just chat with writers. This is a great place to answer questions outside of class and keep an open line of communication. This has also greatly contributed to the closeness and friendliness of our staff.

Work hard, play hard!

We love an excuse to throw a party. Not only do these celebrations give us a chance to step away from the stress of school, but they also foster engagement among writers and help with team morale. I have made countless sign-up sheets where people can bring in food and drinks (optionally). I have organized a "Friendsgiving", Secret Santa exchange, end-of-year celebration, and even a day where we made slime!

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