Embedded Files
IN OTHERS' WORDS
During the 2021-2022 school year, the journalism class was the largest it had ever been. I was one of 30 total students. The following year, I was the only sophomore to return to journalism. No staffers from the Class of 2025 returned alongside me because, as a close friend put it, they felt like "article monkeys": expected to produce content but not privy to inside jokes or conversations. I began to understand how important fostering a welcoming environment was. At the end of that year, we spoke about the possibility of having to stop printing a magazine simply because our staff was too small to handle the workload.
Fast forward to junior year, and we were down to a staff of six—four seniors and two juniors, as Hannah joined the class after being in the club for two years. We also had a new advisor, Ms. Lisa Hampton, someone with little experience as a journalism advisor, but a passion to learn and work together. We had one year to gather staff writers, one year to figure out how to recruit and, most importantly, keep them. Together, I was determined, we would rebuild.
As online editor-in-chief, the first thing I needed a new system to manage the staff. The prior spreadsheets were ineffective, and few people actually used them. The new spreadsheet that we used last year, and still use today, is explained below.
The old spreadsheet failed to effectively foster communication and keep track of articles.
The new spreadsheet thematically matched the tjTODAY website, had color and automatically updated tables. When a category was selected in the dropdown menu, the table above automatically added to the total for that category. Additionally, when a date was added to "Date Posted," the corresponding date in the calendar was highlighted. This helped me keep track of coverage and ensure we had a diverse selection of articles being published to the website regularly.
Scrolling down, some of the highlighting systems we used are available. The yellow represents an article that won Best of SNO and the blue is an article that was originally printed a newsmagazine.
Additionally, evident by the early dates in the spreadsheet, it took over two months to build the staff back up to beginning to publish regularly.
By the end of the year, I had a staff of over 30 writers, with enough to be publishing approximately every day. With as many articles in the work, it was vital to start scheduling posts to avoid over publishing one day and going weeks without articles. This was how I kept track of articles that were completed.
Scrolling futher down, this was how I kept track of what articles were currently being written, separated by category. If I noticed a certain category had fewer articles in the works, I would highlight the category in orange to remind myself to assign more articles in that category.
The final section of the first page of this spreadsheet was where I kept track of ideas. Throughout the day, anytime I got an idea for a story that would work, I would add it to this spreadsheet. When 8th period came around and I was working with staffers, I would have a bank of possible article ideas for them to choose between. I encouraged staffers to add their own ideas to the spreadsheet, especially if they knew something was happening in a club or activity they were a part of but couldn't write about.
This was the second page in the spreadsheet, and how I kept track of each staff writer. When someone completed training, I would add their name to this table; every Monday, Wednesday and Friday—the days we had journalism class—I would go down the spreadsheet and message each staffer on the list. Depending on their status within the brainstorming, drafting and revising I would ask one of the following questions:
Have you decided on an article topic you want to write about?
How's your draft going? Can you get it done by XYZ date?
Have you gotten the chance to go through my edits yet? Do you have any questions?
This was the third page in the spreadsheet, with resources I gathered from outside sources. I wanted every staffer to have access to the resources that helped me as a starting journalist. In addition to the resources, I listed example articles from tjTODAY to demonstrate how to apply the skills to a unique story.
During the spring, after the final spreads of the yearbook were turned in, my advisor Ms. Hampton wanted the 24 yearbook Journalism 1 students (J1s) to learn about article writing. The first assignment they had was to write one article by the end of third quarter.
I worked directly with each of the 24 staffers, bringing the count of tjTODAY writers up to over 50. I created a second table beneath the one of tjTODAY writers to keep track of editing the yearbook articles.
After the third quarter deadline came to an end, the yearbook J1s were assigned to write and publish at least three more articles each before the end of the school year.
This was how I kept track of those three articles per J1 during fourth quarter. This workload on top of the tjTODAY staff writers was too much for me to handle alone. I reached out to Ms. Hampton and Hannah, and we developed a plan moving forward to get it done. I still edited the majority of the articles for the yearbook J1s, and all of the ones for the tjTODAY staffers, but for the first time in a while, I felt supported by the other editors. Hannah and Laura helped me manage the edits through AP and finals season.
Compiling everything into one table like this (left) helped me stay organized and communicate the status of everyone's workload with Ms. Hampton.
By the end of junior year, I edited and published 146 of the 164 articles that went onto the website. Looking back, it was a difficult undertaking and to this day one of the hardest things I've ever done. I spent almost two hours per day working on journalism, not including class, lunch and 8th period time and published an article to the website daily for six months in a row. The close-knit bonds I built with the staffers who chose to take the class the following year—now managing editors Sophia, Emily, Samhita, Karen and social media manager Mariam—were beyond worth it. Nothing warms my heart more than the conversations I have with them and the other writers in the club that the journalism class and environment is something they look forward to every day.
If I had to pick one single thing over the past four years that I am most proud of, it is the community that we have built as a staff.
In my experience, most of the staffers wanted to be writers and were more than willing, rather happy, to do work when reminded. I noticed over time that when I got busy and forgot to reach out, the writers would also stop turning in articles. It made sense on a human level: you equal the amount of effort put into you. When I was the person reaching out, the staffers rightly recognized their place on the staff. With that, though, comes responsibility. I offered my time quite often, regularly saying I would be happy to help out with anything they needed—when someone did ask for that help, I then had the responsibility to provide the promised assistance. That included making rounds of edits when drafts were turned in, regardless of when they were submitted.
EDITING
I prefer to edit in person over Google Docs. Over time, I found that when adding comments to a Google Doc, the writer will just mindlessly approve each suggestion, going down the list and eventually repeating the same errors because of it. As such, I prefer to read through the article on my own, and then work with the staffer on their laptop—I explain what changes to make and why.
That being said, with the sheer quantity of articles that were being written and edited by just me, editing through comments was necessary.
1: Rejection Wall woes
Every year, a certain wall within our school gets covered with rejection letters. I've heard from past students and teachers that it was something that occurred annually without fail. However, during the spring of 2023 very few letters were taped to the wall. I offered the story idea to one of the yearbook J1s, Mack, and he liked the idea. This is how I edited his article.
This was the first draft Mack sent me on this topic, titled "Rejection wall woes." While this was a scenario where I needed to do edits entirely virtual, I did my best to add comments that were both grammatical and also open-ended, so Mack would be able to learn from the edits.
Once edits are completed and I publish the article, I will always either message the link to them or add it as a comment.
These were some of the comments I added alongside a few grammatical, AP style and overall structure edits. I also had numerous comments that restructured the article to follow the LQTQ format, rather than transition and quote in one paragraph.
The main issues with the first draft was establishing the status quo and getting more unique quotes. Because the angle of this article was a comparison of the past to the present, the article needed to be able to set the scene of what typically happened in the past. This was made difficult by numerous factors: one, the previous seniors who might have participated in the trend were graduates, two, it was difficult to find photos of the past rejection walls to showcase the sheer number of letters that covered it, and three, few seniors were willing to talk about why they didn't put their letters on the wall.
Through numerous rounds of edits and email conversations, we worked toward a final draft.
I submit every article I can to Best of SNO. After spending the summer before junior year exploring the back end of SNO to learn how to submit awards and upload articles, I regularly used those resources throughout the school year. This email was me informing Mack that his article was recognized by Best of SNO.
2: Where’s my jacket?
This is an example of an article that was edited primarily through verbal feedback during 8th period blocks. I gave direct comments on the Google Doc a few times, which will be listed below, but most of the larger edits I explained in person, which I always prefer over comments.
These are some highlights out of the 50+ total comments over the course of the month editing this article. Beyond these comments, I worked closely with him during 8th period meetings to talk through necessary changes to the article and why they were important.
The final story was published on March 17.
3: On Paper
This year, we have eleven J1s of our own, freshmen who signed up for this class prior to participating in the club. Due to the change in advisor and having no J1s in class junior year, we had little to no past resources to use to teach journalism to the J1s. As someone who has always loved teaching and lecturing, I gladly took it upon myself to develop the full training module and curriculum for the J1s this year.
One of the first assignments we did was to teach news writing. I created a ridiculous situation where I was a freshman who was injured on the field that morning because I was hit by a drone belonging to environmentalist Hannah (my co-EIC). Their task was to write a news article using the fictional quotes, facts and data.
After not having the students who signed up for the class Journalism 1 (J1s) in the same class as the rest of the journalism students (2 through 4) during my sophomore and junior year, I worked closely with our advisor to push to get the J1s to be in the same class. After months of communication between ourselves, Ms. Hampton and the administration, the email above is from Ms. Hampton during the summer before the 2024-2025 school year, when we were given the good news that we have the J1s in the same class as us. Though it is initially a seemingly small issue, having the in-person connection and time to work one-on-one with other students is irreplaceable.
I still favored face-to-face commentary over comments on a document that someone can mindlessly accept. My happy medium was making comments on paper. This ensured I could add feedback to all eleven stories and also forces the writers to learn the changes they make, as they can't just accept the comments. I ended up doing four rounds of edits with everyone before they turned in their final drafts.
After this assignment was completed, the staffers paired up to write articles for Homecoming Week, the busiest time of year for tjTODAY. Their articles were all of high quality and published in a timely manner.
LEADERSHIP
To lead a group of people effectively is to make the group so prepared, they stand strong without you. While it would have been easier to continue my process of leadership from junior year to this year, it was more important to me to teach the new managing editors how to run a publication. The spreadsheet holds onto its position as the hub of all information relating to tjTODAY, though with a few tweaks.
This year, the far right column has a dropdown menu for which editor was responsible for editing the article. It was important to me that the editors began to learn how to edit articles and work with underclassmen. It took some time for them to get situated with 8th period, but they are thriving now.
I kept the yellow highlight to recognize articles that have won Best of SNO, and added a purple highlight to keep track of articles that include some form of interactive multimedia.
I continued scheduling posts, though I do it in a different way now. Because the managing editors are working directly with the staff writers, they add the stories into the back end of the website and submit them for review before adding the title of the story to this section of the spreadsheet
I go through each story on the website first, double checking for AP style and grammatical errors, as well as the technical aspects of putting an article into the website, like tags and selecting categories and correctly adding the "related stories" widget. Once I schedule the post on the website, I will add a date to the spreadsheet. When the article gets published, I move the row in the spreadsheet up to the "published" portion and fill out the corresponding data.
I added a section for the editor and notes to the staff writer page of the spreadsheet.
The third page is where I keep track of the eleven J1s in the class and the articles they are working on. Their first assignment was writing Homecoming news and sports stories.
After the first article, broadcast J1s split off separately, so from article two through six, I only track the journalism J1s.
Something else we did this year was restructure the editorial board. Before this year, we had Editor-in-Chiefs, copy editor and team leaders as the only three possible positions. After working through issues last year with unbalanced workloads across editors, we decided it would be best to have one Print Editor-in-Chief and one Online Editor-in-Chief, both responsible for their corresponding publications. Team leaders would typically do what I did during junior year—work one-on-one with staff writers and edit articles to then be published on the website. Now, we have managing editors instead, who have the same responsibilities as team leaders once did. We also added three manager positions: social media manager, multimedia manager and photography manager.
Last year's calendar during February.
This year's calendar during February.
Attached to the top of the board are Best of SNO certificates, which are pinned there should the recipient of the certificate not want one. I believe in public praise and private corrections as the best method of teaching, and this is one way I implement it. When a staffer or editor accomplishes something of worthy note, at the beginning of the class period I will make an announcement thanking them or congratulating them. When the first freshman staff writer won a Best of SNO award, we played clapping audio over the speakers and gave a speech to the whole class before handing it over.
TEACHING
As I previously mentioned, I took it upon myself to develop the curriculum and training for the J1s this year. The previous website used to train club writers was isolated and impersonal, and ultimately not that effective in actually teaching journalism skills.
I created all of the following resources unless otherwise indicated.
I treated each module like a unit, with multiple lessons, practice and final summative assignment for each type of story.
Module 1: News
After going through examples of news articles, the structure of news articles and lede writing, the J1s were given the document to the left to write a news article about.
This was an exercise in following news structure, AP style and determining what information is relevant to the story.
All eleven J1s wrote their drafts and printed them out. I gave feedback and comments on the paper and then completed revisions with them during class. We went through four rounds of edits before their final draft was due.
After going through their drafts, I taught lessons on some of the most common mistakes.
My favorite thing to do when teaching how to conduct interviews is to pull a random student in the class and ask, "How was your day?" Every time I've done this, they say, "good," and I have that pre-written on the next slide. Then, I will ask another person, "Tell me your favorite interaction you've had all day," and they answer with more interesting details and stories. The takeaway is to ask questions that can be answered well—no one goes into an interview planning on giving you bad quotes, they just don't know how to answer the specific question you asked in more detail.
Each module's summative grade is a published article—for news, it was a Homecoming news article. To the right is the calendar for when their drafts were due for the articles to be timely.
The spreadsheet is where we keep track of the summative article assignments
Module 2: Features
Module 3: Entertainment
Rather than teach entertainment writing through slides, I got printed-out copies of the two example entertainment articles. We all sat down at desks together, taking turns reading a paragraph out loud. I talked through my top tips for writing entertainment articles and we critiqued the two examples. I've learned the most about article writing through editing so many, so this was my attempt to teach through grading.
Module 4: Sports
Writing Sports Stories.docx.pdfBecause news and sports writing is so similar, just about different topics, I did not go through a whole lesson. Rather, I just shared the document to the left.
Module 5: Opinion
The opinion planning doc was due prior to the class when we reviewed the structure of an opinion article, the slides to the right.
The articles that each J1 wrote and published to the website was tracked using the spreadsheet I explained earlier. Currently, the J1s have an assignment to write and publish three full-length articles of different categories during the month of March. They have no restrictions on what the stories can be about, just that they must be published before April and fit within the parameters of what we cover within tjTODAY. They are now full-fledged staff writers.
TEAM BUILDING
I firmly believe team building is the most important factor to a consistently successful staff. Regardless of journalistic skill or capability, no student will stick with a publication unless they feel welcome and an irreplaceable part of a team.
Here are some things I did—and continue doing today—to build close connections with each individual on staff:
1: Reaching out & learning names
Something this small makes the most significant difference. I often joke that my Messenger chat history makes me look like the world's biggest flirt, solely based on how many conversations I begin with "hiii!" I make a point to always send the first text and reach out to prospective writers. During junior year, I would pull up the table of all current staff writers on the spreadsheet, and message every single person to check in on their article status. It was extreme but effective, and I remain close friends with most of these people today.
I also began saying hi in the hallways—the progression always grew from confused, slow waves back to excited hellos screaming across the school before I could speak. If I had the time to, I would always stop and have a short conversation with them, ask how their day was and if they were planning on going to TJ Media that block.
2: Class Parties
Nothing builds connection more than food. So far this year, I've organized three class parties—Halloween (left), Thanksgiving and winter break—where everyone brings in food and we play a movie.
We work hard in class on a daily basis, and every one of the underclassmen and editors deserves to celebrate that hard work with good food and fun activities.
We also had a celebration for the end of Scholastic Journalism Week, where we watched a journalism film—'The Post" (2017)—and ate copious amounts of food after discussing press freedom history and the current state of politics in relation to First Amendment press freedoms being discussed today. For more on that, see the "Law, Ethics & News Literacy" tab.
3: Field Trips
Going on these long field trips is one of the most automatic ways I've grown closer to my staff. It's nearly impossible to spend a night with a group of people and not grow closer.
Everyone also reveals different sides to themselves that we don't see in the classroom. Some of my best memories are from conventions, whether they be at CSPA in New York (right), NSPA in Pennsylvania or VHSL in Harrisonburg (four below).
4: Work Sessions
As the name suggests, every print cycle the editors with have one work session outside of school hours, either after school or on the weekend to get caught up on work and deadlines for that print issue. To the right was our work session for the November political issue, the night before our trip to Pennsylvania for NSPA.
Having work sessions together, as opposed to doing the same amount of work, just at home instead, both saves time and builds stronger connections. If someone needs help with a design element, we are right there to answer it; if someone needs an article edited or a spread reviewed, we are right there to do it. With blasting music and, of course, good food, work sessions are always a highlight for every month.
The people I meet through journalism have become my closest friends and are now permanent fixtures in my happiest memories.
To think that we went from cutting four pages off the magazine—and discussing the possibility of removing the print publication completely—to now publishing 24 pages regularly (more for photo issue!) and having the strongest staff we've had in all of my four years is insane. This publication has meant so much to me over the past four years, and I am irrevocably changed because of it. My only hope is that I can do that for someone else interested in journalism, as well.
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