Editing, leadership, and team building
Team Building
The Roar community is my second home. I wanted our staff on Volume 40 to feel the same joy and welcome that I did the second I stepped into room 1201.
The Roar is lucky to have a designated "Roar Advisory" each Monday, so I've loved getting to bond with the team each week during that time! In particular, we insist on sharing our "Moments of Joy" from the weekend, and it's always sweet to hear everyone's voices then :)
Also, at the start of the volume, we hosted Roar's first-ever Media Day! I loved seeing everyone's personality shine through in each of these shots, and I'm so happy to have gotten to capture these moments, featured below!
photos by Evan Ng
And with a team as tight-knit as ours was, it's always hard to say goodbye. Here are some superlatives/notes that my Co-Editor-in-Chief and I wrote at the end of this volume for each staff member as a sort of farewell and thank you. It was bittersweet to reflect on my memories with everyone :')
Editing
Training the next "generation" of journalists has always been a priority for me. As the largest ever batch of new reporters came through at the start of this year, I knew the Roar needed a more comprehensive and consolidated approach to reporter training. Thus, per my initiative, senior staff and I hosted several training meetings and created detailed guides for reporters to learn the ropes of interviewing, outlining, writing, etc. Through interactive and engaging trainings at the start of the volume and school year, like AP style Kahoot and goofy mock interviews, section editors reported receiving much more polished articles from reporters.
Below is just the tip of the iceberg of our reporter training guides:
Lots of time and care go in each of my edits. It's important to me as an editor to preserve the writer's original voice while also formatting and enhancing their writing to be most suitable for print. Here is an example of constructive feedback that I leave on each article I edit.
Great job with this article! You included some great perspectives, and you explained the bill/referendum super well! My edits mostly had to do with mechanics (he said, she said)—careful not to editorialize with those verbs (expressing your opinion rather than just stating the facts) and use "said" only, no matter how repetitive it may sound. I also touched up the grammar and a couple of AP-style formatting mistakes (dates). Be sure to add more background in the lead-ins—some quotes didn’t have a lead-in at all. They’re super important to introduce every quote, but they’re so tricky to get right sometimes! As a rule of thumb, use lead-ins to introduce the interviewee and give necessary background information/context rather than merely summarizing the quote to follow. Also, make sure to follow up with Actose about the quote you weren’t sure about. Finally, I made a suggestion for a new title, but I’m not necessarily dead-set on it either—I’d encourage you to think of a title that summarizes the article more clearly than it is right now. Overall, awesome job! I can tell you’ve really got the hang of interviewing. Hopefully, my comments will help you with some technicalities in your future articles — keep up the great work!
Mock article edits used in reporter training:
Leadership
With a team of more than 25, and more than 100 if you include reporters, the various facets of leadership were something I knew were integral in my role as Co-Editor-in-Chief. I stepped up to the role — not just for the actual paper, but also for each individual on the Roar team. I knew organization, communication, and support was important to both put out a paper each month that was up to our standards while also fostering any new reporters and artists along the way.
At NSPA, I was sure to attend as many sessions as possible on how to best show up for my team. These two sessions served as the perfect opportunity for me to reflect on my own experiences and values (which is important for any leader to periodically do), as well as set future goals for leadership.
