Newsroom/Classroom Management
About Newsroom/Classroom Management
In this section, you will find information about how to run your publication and not get overwhelmed. If you are running an online newspaper, the key is to stagger everyone's deadlines so you have content going up every day, but this can become a nightmare to manage. There is no single "right" way to do this. You need to do what is best for your personality and your students. I end up and adapting each year based on my staff. However, there are some strategies I use no matter what.
Give You and Your Staff Visual Reminders that You Can't Ignore
You would think that Google Docs, Sheets, and Calendars would keep you and your staff organized. Yes, it is a great place to record all of the content being published. But you know what they say: out of sight out of mind. Students needs a constant reminder of what is coming up. I utilize bulletin boards, clipboards, and white boards. If you look anywhere in the classroom, there is a reminder of what you need to do.
This is the print bulletin board. It is divided by section. Everyone places their post-it assignment in the appropriate section. The section editors can see what is in their section, and then they post their mock-ups for the class to see. It also helps facilitate conversations between photographers and section editors.
This is the online bulletin board. After you get your online assignment for the cycle, you write your name, section, general angle, and due date on a post-it. You place it on the day you are publishing. Section editors make sure to edit two days prior. After you publish, you take the post-it off and place it on a bill spike on my desk. This is the cathartic for students and a visual signal to me that they are ready to be graded.
When students publish their articles, they take their post-its down from the bulletin board and put it here. This allows students to see their progress, and it is a signal to me that they are ready to have their work graded.
This is the white board we use to keep track of print deadlines. We have a print issue come out five times a year. At the same time, we have online articles being published.
These are the clipboards that section editors use to keep track off the workflow. They track the writer, the editing date, and publication date. Then the editor-in-chief can keep an eye of each section quickly.
This is the long-form features calendar. The features editor made it. She wanted to make sure she could manage the editing workflow of this better. Each little square has a staff member's name on it. They place their name on the day they are publishing their article. Now the editor knows she needs to sit down two days prior with them to edit it. She made a different calendar because long-forms take a lot more time to edit and work through.