LEADERSHIP & team-building

In the photo above, I speak to an audience of over 200 student-journalists and advisers about our staff’s experience interviewing prominent politicians and covering political rallies. I and five other editors gave this presentation, called Election 2020, at the JEA/NSPA 2019 fall convention in Washington, D.C. Photo by Ellen Austin

MY ROLE AS EDITOR IN CHIEF

Editors and reporters from the 2018-2019 staffs of the Winged Post and Harker Aquila pose for a photo prior to a training session for our Humans of Harker project. Photo by Ellen Austin

• Decide and manage newspaper content
• Oversee the “look” of the paper, including photography, illustration and design
• Work with 50+ reporters, photographers, designers and editors to ensure timely, balanced and quality coverage
• Design front page, back page, and center spread of every issue
• Write breaking news and in-depth stories for online and print
• Edit and review every article in the newspaper
• Mentor reporters and editors
• Lead staff editorial meetings and help write editorials

CSPA EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP

In the summer before my junior year, as news editor, I took a course on editorial leadership at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) workshop to prepare me to be a better editor and leader. There, I learned ways to improve staff efficiency and unity from Ray Westbrook, who advises the ReMarker at St. Marks School of Texas. I also learned the value of using a variety of lede styles in our paper and providing resources like article and design checklists to our staff.

I took skills I learned in this workshop back to my publication. As editor in chief, I helped streamline our editing and production process, creating a design checklist for section editors to help them fix small errors such as incorrect folios or photo credits (see Design). I also worked with section editors to incorporate a greater number of compelling news features in both our print and online publications.

AS A LIAISON

I sometimes joke that half of my job as editor in chief is texting. However, this is not really an exaggeration. Along with in-person meetings and work time, I would say that simply communicating with my adviser, co-editors and staff makes up a large and central part of my leadership role.

STRATEGIC MEETINGS

At the beginning of my senior year, our journalism program’s strategic team (editor in chiefs and managing editors) began holding weekly 45-minute lunch meetings to coordinate our coverage across staffs, check in with each other and voice any concerns or challenges we are facing.

In past meetings, we have planned our live Homecoming coverage, discussed ways to streamline our communication and talked about more light-hearted topics such as the venue for our annual holiday party and plans for staff bonding activities.

COMMUNICATION At Events

During coverage of large-scale events such as a protest or a convention, our adviser designates an on-site editor who is in constant communication with her. This editor is responsible for making sure the other editors or reporters covering a given event are safe and organized.

Below are some of my communications with my adviser and on-site team at the California Democratic State Convention in June 2019. Hover over the images for more detailed descriptions.

Here I help direct sophomore editors to the press room to pick up press credentials.

Here I notify the online managing editor that I and two other editors had completed an article with interviews and visuals within an hour of the end of the convention’s morning sessions.

Here our adviser challenges our group to a lunch bet, promising to buy all of us lunch if we are successful in interviewing a presidential candidate.

Here Anna and I inform our adviser that I was able to interview Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). We constantly kept our adviser updated on our coverage.

COMMUNICATION WITH STAFF

As opposed to creating massive group chats through email or text, our staff uses the online platform Slack. Through Slack, we can efficiently message anyone on staff and form “channels” specific to certain sections or purposes. My co-editor in chief and I often use Slack to send PSAs to the entire staff and provide feedback for section editors’ page designs.

In addition, I strive to make myself as open and approachable as possible. As such, I encourage anyone on staff to feel free to shoot me a text or email or stop me for a chat anywhere on campus.

To the right are some examples of my Slack communications (I use both the Winged Post and my personal account). Click the images to enlarge and hover for more detailed descriptions.

Here I remind Winged Post section editors of intermediate design deadlines several weeks before our print date.

Here I congratulate the staff on completing the paper. Two days later, I inform the editors that the paper has arrived.

Here my co-editor-in-chief and I remind section editors to turn in their pages and to watch out for small mistakes in their folios.

COMMUNICATION WITH the school

With Administration

My co-editors in chief and I maintain consistent communication and positive relationships with our school administration. As a representative of our publications, I act as a liaison between our staff and our administrators. On impactful stories, like this breaking news article about a campus shooting threat, we make sure to interview key administrators and corroborate information with them to avoid unprotected speech. After each issue is released, my newspaper co-editor in chief and I try to hand-deliver a copy to our head of upper school.

Editors’ Notes

My co-editor in chief and I also engage with the community by publishing editors’ notes in the paper. We hope to increase transparency of our process by describing the ideas and conversations that go into the decisions we make and the stories we cover.

Read an editors’ note from Issue 1 this school year here.

AS A REPRESENTATIVE

As a leader of my publication, I represent the newspaper in front of my school and sometimes in front of a national audience. I know that this is a great responsibility, and I value it highly.

at the JEA/NSPA CONVENTION

When Harker journalists traveled to Washington, D.C. for the JEA/NSPA 2019 fall convention, five other editors and I presented on our coverage of local and national politics to an audience of over 200 advisers and student-journalists from across the country. During our presentation, “Election 2020,” we spoke of our staff’s transition from covering political events remotely to reporting on them on-site. I gave tips on interviewing political figures and discussed the importance of good interview etiquette and following up with sources.

Through this presentation, we shared our experiences covering these crucial moments in our nation’s history and we encouraged journalists on other high school staffs to do the same.

See our presentation to the right.

Here I speak to a crowd of more than 200 students and advisers at the Washington, D.C. fall convention about covering politics. Photo by Helen Zhu

Here, my co-editor-in-chief of the Winged Post and I stand alongside the editors-in-chief of our yearbook, our Humans of Harker publication and our online site. We announced the completion of the first issue of the newspaper and our transition to be… — Here, my co-editor-in-chief of the Winged Post and I stand alongside the editors-in-chief of our yearbook, our Humans of Harker publication and our online site. We announced the completion of the first issue of the newspaper and our transition to becoming 100 percent biodegradable. Photo by Ellen Austin

AT SCHOOL MEETINGS

Journalism boasts a large presence in our school community. Readership of both our newspaper and online site is high among students and faculty. We reinforce our reputation and engage our community by speaking at school meetings as often as possible. To that end, Harker Journalism has a default five-minute slot during each of our regularly scheduled school meetings. My co-editors in chief and I use this time to speak about new initiatives we are starting, like converting the newspaper to 100 percent biodegradable paper, and to encourage them to participate in our school-wide surveys on political involvement, housing and commute.

AT SCHOOL EVENTS

At school events like Back to School Day and Open House, our leadership team help represented our publications in front of the wider Harker community of parents and family members. Personally, I helped explain our program’s processes, emphasize our role in the community and encourage engagement with our publications and social media.

For more on our outreach at school events, visit Entrepreneurship.

Here I pose for a photo with eight other editors in Harker Journalism who represented our publications to prospective parents during Harker’s Open House on Nov. 3, 2019. Photo by Ellen Austin

AS A MENTOR

My favorite part of being an editor is leading other reporters to fall in love with journalism, as senior editors once did for me. Whether it is helping a freshman invite a city council member to speak to the staff, teaching interviewing techniques to the class or talking a freshman through his worries about his assignments, I feel that the best way I can give back to the journalism program is by serving as a friend and resource to those around me. These experiences working with underclassmen have helped me become a better captain on the wrestling team, a better club president of Junior State of America and a better Link Crew mentor for freshmen advisories.

To the right, I work with several print and online editors to plan our design

for a package on the Bay Area housing crisis.

big little

In Harker Journalism, like in many newsrooms, we call our first years “cubs.” To welcome and familiarize them to the journalism program, we created the Big Little system. This year, I helped assign each cub to a returner who serves as a mentor, journalistic wisdom dispenser and generally benign resource. Whether to help proofread an article or give advice on camera settings, a big should always be ready to help their cub in need.

Freshmen cubs can easily feel intimidated by the fast pace and multi-grade level structure of the program. Senior editors and frightened freshmen are usually all in the same room. By making the cubs feel welcome, the Big Little system helps overcome some of those initial barriers.

EDITORS’ WEEK

My work for this school year started over the summer with planning Editors’ Week, a week of bonding and training for returning staff members. In addition to presenting my vision for the year, hearing the ideas of everyone on staff and teaching design and leadership skills to first-time editors, I led team-building activities that involved, among other things, yoga, wordplay and writing with toothpaste.

A group of editors from the Winged Post, Harker Aquila and Humans of Harker write adjectives to describe Harker Journalism with toothpaste. Photo by Ellen Austin

Two Humans of Harker editors and the Winged Post copy editor work on a fun bonding activity during our Editors’ Week in late August 2019. Photo by Ellen Austin

TRAINING

Part of my role as editor in chief is teaching and training younger reporters, both in and out of class. This has improved my public speaking and communication skills, as well as helped me appreciate just how hard my teachers work on a daily basis.

Below and in Editing are presentations last year’s editors in chiefs, Kat and Prameela, executive news editor, Ryan, and I made to help teach new reporters writing skills.

Copy of Article Structure Powerpoint .png

Copy of Sourcing and Interview Etiquette .png

BREAKING!

I also help train reporters to cover breaking news events. Our publication’s philosophy is to be ready for a breaking news event at any given moment, so that when something big happens, like a school shooting threat or the county’s first case of COVID-19, we are able to coordinate a breaking news article with multiple interviews, photos and graphics without a hitch.

To train reporters to do this, we run fun breaking news simulations throughout the year that require reporters to spontaneously think of and interview sources and gather a panel of “experts” for a pseudo-news conference. We encourage reporters to think critically about what information is reliable and what is not.

In the past, topics for these simulations have included a giant robot destroying our science building, a meteor hitting our football field and squirrels overrunning our campus. Since these exercises tend to be lighthearted, they are also a great chance for bigs to bond with and mentor their littles.

Here is a breaking news exercise that the strategic team and I prepared for our cubs. The breaking news scenarios train the cubs for covering future breaking news events.

See a sample breaking news simulation.

IMPROVING OUR PROCESSES

As a leader on staff, I constantly try to reform our publication for the better and overcome challenges as a team. For example, when students noticed a shortage of community faces in our newspaper, my co-editor in chief and I initiated conversations with our photo editor and section editors to diversify our coverage and identify our blind spots. When we noticed section editors struggling to keep up with parts of the production process, we increased face-to-face check-ins with editors and created resources like a design checklist to help them. We also increased collaboration between section editors, online editors, photo editors, copy editors and design editors to streamline production and create greater staff unity.

Communication

As a print publication, our staff has traditionally struggled to complete design when they are at home and do not have access to on-campus desktops. This year, my co-editor in chief Gloria and I transitioned our staff to a higher level of online communication, file-sharing and design work by utilizing the Slack communication platform and Google Drive. With this change, Gloria and I were able to remotely exchange large files with and provide more accessible guidance to section editors throughout the design process.

Feedback

To help section editors improve with every issue, and eventually take up the mantle for future years, my co-editor in chief and I dedicate a certain amount of time after each issue to reflection. We ask editors to fill out a self-reflection form on their work for the issue, and then we write personalized feedback for each editor, praising them for their strengths that issue and suggesting ways that they can improve in future issues.

See the self-reflection form for section editors.

See feedback my co-editor-in-chief and I wrote for our section editors after Issue 2.

Photo Frenzy

Even before becoming editor in chief, I looked for ways to make structural improvements. Upon taking over from the photo editor, Kathy, on creating Photo Frenzy slideshows my junior year, I made changes to streamline the process and increase staff participation. Previously, staff members would send their photo for the week in individual emails. I found that receiving 50+ emails from every staff member across all publications to be overwhelming and disorganized. In addition, many people would forget to send captions or other information with their photos. Instead, I created a Google form to collect photo submissions every week. By consolidating every submission into one spreadsheet, the form made photo batch renames and slideshow creation far easier, reducing the time it took to make the slideshows by half. By requiring staff members to submit captions and context as to who and what the photos show, the form also reduced the amount of missing information in photo submissions. This Photo Frenzy system continues to this day and is currently run by our asst. photo editor Irene.

See a Photo Frenzy form here.

Leading POLITICAL COVERAGE

As editor in chief and news editor, I coordinated coverage of countless events, both on and off campus. Since I have gotten so much out of covering local and national politics, I try to get as many people involved in our political reporting as possible by alerting them to upcoming events and offering advice on covering them.

I was delighted when last fall, a freshman, Sarah, said that she wanted to interview a Saratoga city council member and congressional candidate.

I worked with Sarah to draft an email to Council Member Rishi Kumar’s campaign, inviting him to speak to our staff. In the email, we emphasized how his visit would be a valuable learning opportunity for the whole staff, and we provided links to our previous political coverage. Within days, Kumar responded that he would be happy to visit and sit for an interview.

To prepare, I helped Sarah brainstorm interview questions and arranged for photographers to take photos of his talk. When the day came, I led a few editors and Sarah in interviewing Kumar on his civic work and campaign for Congress.

Later that night, I helped mentor Sarah as she wrote her very first news article. In addition to suggesting edits according to AP style and inverted pyramid structure, I also cautioned her against using subjective language that may give the impression of bias. Later, I also helped Sarah extend the same invitation to Kumar’s opponent in his campaign in order to maintain balance in our coverage. In the end, Sarah produced a fantastic article.

Several months later, a parent emailed our head of school accusing the journalism program of political bias and claiming that the article endorsed Kumar’s bid for Congress. However, due to our careful edits back in October, we were able to explain that our article was a news article on his visit and not an endorsement.

Read the final story. Hover over the images to the right for more detailed descriptions.

For more on how we help our staff avoid bias, visit Law & Ethics, News Literacy and Editing.

This is the email I sent to reporters who had previously shown interest in covering the upcoming Bernie Sanders rally on March 24, 2019 in San Francisco. Here, I remind the staff members to bring a fully charged phone, press pass and a reporters’ no… — This is the email I sent to reporters who had previously shown interest in covering the upcoming Bernie Sanders rally on March 24, 2019 in San Francisco. Here, I remind the staff members to bring a fully charged phone, press pass and a reporters’ notebook to the rally.

Here is the email I sent out to the entire Harker journalism staff of over 70 reporters and editors, informing them of upcoming political events.

Page 3 of Issue 3 of the Winged Post, Volume 21, in which Sarah’s article was published on Nov. 18, 2019.

AS A TEAM BUILDER

My adviser once asked me: what do you want your legacy for the newspaper to be? After thinking over her question, I decided that after I graduate, I want to leave behind a team of friends who will support each other in doing their best work while having fun along the way.

“PAPER PLATES”

After each issue of the newspaper, my co-editor in chief and I have continued a longstanding Winged Post tradition to recognize exemplary work with “Paper Plate” Awards, a fun and informal way to show our appreciation for the staff. I added a new award, the “Pulse of the Paper” award, for a reporter whose spirit, kindness or dedication carries the rest of the staff through publication. This is just one of the ways in which we try to create a fun and supportive environment at every step of publication.

SECRET SANTA

Every year, we take part in Secret Santa, a tradition that culminates in our annual holiday party. Staff members are randomly paired up, and wish lists are anonymously exchanged. Over the course of a week, staff members leave small gifts and drop clues to their identities, which are ultimately revealed at the holiday party. This year, I organized Secret Santa, coordinating wish list exchanges and staff pairings, explaining all the rules and encouraging everyone to have fun with the process.

REPRESENTATION MATTERS

DIVERSITY IN STEM

One of the Winged Post’s biggest struggles is representing the diversity of the staff and student body in our coverage, including in our sourcing and visuals. We emphasize the importance of sourcing from multiple grade levels and genders, and as a general guideline, we require section editors to have the face of at least one student or teacher on their pages, through photos, pull quote headshots or illustrations.

An example of when I have worked to increase the diversity of representation on our news pages is when I edited both of the STEM pages for Issue 3.

One page revolved around the #TeamTrees movement started by YouTubers Mr. Beast and Mark Rober. The other page focused on the Harker robotics team starting their build season. In terms of visuals for early drafts of the first page, our STEM editor had placed an illustration of a globe and two large illustrated headshots of the two YouTubers. The actual article had only two interviews – one with an outside professor and one with the adviser of our school’s green team.

To help this page show more diversity and better represent our school, the design editors, Nina and Jin, and I reworked the page by reducing the size of the YouTubers’ headshots, implementing a “Talk Around Campus” with quotes and headshots from a variety of students on campus and by utilizing an amazing illustration by our sophomore co-lifestyle editor Nicole.

See the before and after drafts below.

BEFORE: Here is an early draft of page 13 of Issue 3, Volume 21 of the Winged Post.

AFTER: Here is the final draft of page 13 of Issue 3, Volume 21 of the Winged Post. Published on Dec. 6, 2019.

On the other STEM page, early drafts showed only two visuals – a sophomore boy working on the robot and a cut-out photograph of the robot itself. In revising this page, I had a conversation with the STEM editor about the potential harm of having a boy as the only student on an entire page dedicated to Harker Robotics, a club with just as many girls as boys. We discussed how, especially in a traditionally male-dominated field like STEM, it is especially important to give equal and ample representation to all genders.

For the final page draft, the STEM editor and I redesigned the page to add seven more photos of both boys and girls from multiple grade levels, increasing the diversity of our representation.

See the before and after drafts below.

BEFORE: Here is an early draft of page 12 of Issue 3, Volume 21 of the Winged Post.

AFTER: Here is page 12 of Issue 3, Volume 21 of the Winged Post. Published on Dec. 6, 2019.

DIVERSITY IN SPORTS

Similar to how we strive to represent Harker’s diversity through our STEM pages, we also go to great lengths to ensure that there is equal representation on our sports pages. For articles that give updates on in-season sports, I work with our sports editors and strategic team to double and triple-check that every in-season sport is represented. By accidentally overlooking a single team, we risk erasing and misrepresenting members of our community. Just like in our STEM pages, we do our best to show a nearly equal number of boys and girls of different grade levels on our sports pages.

Here is page 15 of Issue 3, Volume 21 of the Winged Post. Published on Nov. 18, 2019.

Here is page 13 of Issue 3, Volume 20 of the Winged Post. Published on Dec. 6, 2019.

COVERAGE GAPS

At multiple stages in our production process every issue, we check for any blindspots or gaps in our coverage by crowdsourcing from our entire staff. We welcome everyone’s input to make sure we are not overlooking newsworthy stories about any club, person or event in our community. This goes back to ensuring that we are fairly representing our school community and all its diversity.

For example, when we held a coverage gap brainstorming session a few days ahead of the print date of Issue 3 this school year, we were alerted to the fact that we tended to undercover freshmen events. In that issue, we made sure to include more coverage of the freshman class, like an article on the freshman class council elections and a brief on the Harker DECA trip, which consisted of mostly freshmen.

See notes we compiled while brainstorming coverage gaps in Issue 3 ahead of the issue’s print date.

NEWS LITERACY