WEB
Our news site, Harker Aquila, for which I was news editor and global editor in my junior and sophomore years, respectively.
From being the news editor of our newspaper and online site in my junior year, I can vouch for the benefits of having a digital news site that works in close conjunction with our legacy print newspaper. This year, as editor in chief of our print newspaper, I collaborated closely with our online strategic leadership to coordinate coverage. When a breaking news event happens, I help lead the effort to get timely and accurate information to our school community.
In addition, I see data journalism as a promising new terrain for all high school programs. From learning data science at the University of Chicago’s summer course Pathways to Data Science, interactive data visualization at a Northwestern Medill workshop and Python and Java in AP Computer Science, I have explored innovative ways of using the web to convey information and aim to continue doing so.
THE PROCESS
Roughly five to six weeks before each print date, editors from the Winged Post and Aquila meet to discuss and plan the content for each section. Section editors flesh out and revise story angles and brainstorm sourcing and design. After section editors approve the articles going in their pages, my co-editor in chief and I work with the online strategic team to assign reporters and photographers to each article.
AS NEWS AND GLOBAL EDITOR
As news editor my junior year and global editor my sophomore year, I had obligations for both print and online. For our news site every week I pitched local, national and global article topics, assigned reporters and edited and managed news coverage.
BREAKING NEWS
In serious breaking news scenarios, a team of senior editors takes up the mantle. Whenever a breaking news event occurs, we immediately text a group chat with these editors and our adviser. From there, we leap into action.
Below are some examples of breaking news stories I have led.
Santa Clara County announces first case of coronavirus – as infected person in isolation
At 1:21 p.m. on a relatively uneventful Friday, I got an email with a press release straight from the Santa Clara County Public Health Department (SCCPHD), informing local media outlets of the first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in my county.
I immediately began thinking about how to get timely and factual reporting on the case out to our community. I had already observed high levels of concern regarding the virus among students and parents, and I knew this case in our county would spark additional alarm. It was important that we promptly dispelled any misinformation that might arise.
At 1:30 p.m., I found and informed my adviser of the news, and, in five minutes, we jointly made a hurried coverage/upload plan.
At 1:35 p.m., my journalism class period started, and I began organizing the breaking news coverage. I assigned one editor to call local pharmacies for information on the effectiveness and supply of face masks. I assigned an illustrator to create an infographic on good hygienic practices. I asked two more editors to search for updates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the SCCPHD. Our goal: finish an article draft by 3:00 p.m.
At 2:00 p.m., we live-streamed the SCCPHD’s press conference and had a reporter transcribe the statement in real time.
At 2:05 p.m., we invited the school nurse into the journalism room to listen to the press conference with us and interviewed her on health precautions that students could take.
By 3:00 p.m. our team had completed a 1,000+ word article; our illustrator had finished an aesthetic and informative graphic and we had obtained quotes from the school nurse, the SCCPHD press conference and a manager of a local CVS. We began to address edits from our adviser and copy editor.
At 4:00 p.m., we invited a biology teacher to the journalism room for an interview about the science behind the virus.
At 4:31 p.m., Harker parents received an email from head of school Brian Yager with details on how the virus’s presence in our county would affect school-related activities and students’ travel plans over the upcoming February break. Editors and I began incorporating this new information.
At 4:45 p.m., the STEM editor and I set out to try and interview either Yager or the assistant head of school. Both administrators deferred to the email sent earlier.
At 5:00 p.m., within three-and-a-half hours of SCCPHD’s announcement, our staff published a 1,581 word article with diverse and pertinent local sources, complete with a variety of visuals and graphics.
The article was widely shared by Harker science teachers as a local and reliable source of information.
Upper school administration calls sudden, mandatory all-school meeting after students reported threatening graffiti message
On Nov. 5, 2019, our online managing editor, Varsha, texted the breaking news crew saying that she had heard rumors of there being a shooting threat graffitied on the wall of a specific boy’s restroom.
However, one of the first things that we learn in journalism is to check things out for ourselves. I immediately walked to the restroom in question and found that it was closed off and locked.
Without corroboration from the administration, we knew we could not publish any kind of article. Two hours later, administration convened a spontaneous all-school meeting, confirmed the rumors that we had heard earlier in the day.
Immediately following the meeting, editors from the breaking news team and I interviewed the head of upper school and the assistant head of school. I then worked with online editors Arya and Varsha as they led work on a comprehensive, over 1,000-word breaking news package. Midway through the article’s completion, I met with the staff’s copy editor to double and triple-check all the information and statistics we had included in the article. Any misinformation we published would cause great harm to our community. When we finished the article’s final draft, the online editor in chief, our adviser, my Winged Post co-editor in chief and I all sat down to do a final read-through and fact-check before publishing.
The shooting threat shook our school community, calling all of our safety into doubt. With this article, our news team hoped to calm fears and anxiety among the student body by providing timely and factual information rather than speculation.
To read about my follow-up interviews with school administrators after this breaking news article, visit News Gathering.
Here I work on an article in the press box of the California Democratic Party Convention on June 1, 2019.
Blue Wave Rolling: Democratic presidential hopefuls reach out to voters in California Democratic State Convention
During the first week of June 2019, school was almost over… the only thing left for that weekend was to study for upcoming finals. The problem? The same “study weekend” collided with the California Democratic Convention, which would feature 14 presidential candidates. I and the online managing editor faced a difficult choice: cover the convention or spend two more days studying for finals.
Knowing that this event would be historic for ourselves and our journalism program, we chose the convention. We also could not have been more excited to hear that two sophomores, Anna and Arushi, were willing to commit to the same sacrifice by covering the event on-site with us.
The week prior to the convention, in addition to planning and organizing our coverage, we reached out to the convention’s organizer to secure press credentials for the group.
After driving 60 miles to the convention hall in San Francisco on the first day of the event, we jumped into action, picking up our credentials, getting a spot in the press box and covering the morning session where political figures like Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke and Sen. Elizabeth Warren each spoke to an audience of over 3,000 people.
I was responsible not only for reporting but also for looking out for my younger staff members. I made sure to keep in constant contact with everyone on site through text and face-to-face check-ins. I also continually kept my adviser updated on the events of that morning.
By the end of the general session close to noon, we all convened in the press box, alongside reporters from outlets like the San Francisco Chronicle and the Mercury News (we did not see any other high school journalists) and produced a comprehensive article on the events of that morning.
Only after we had finished writing the 2,500-word article, edited and captioned our photos and copy-edited our work did we finally sit back and let out a collective sigh of relief.
The next morning, we got up and did it all again. Only thing left was finals.
DATA JOURNALISM
SURVEYS
One way in which the Winged Post utilizes data is through school wide surveys for students and faculty. In the recent past, we have taken polls for articles on the 2020 Democratic primaries, an article on abortion, an opinions piece on Columbus day and our housing package. For every survey, posted through our official social media channels (Facebook and Instagram) and our academic site Schoology, we usually receive a range of about 150-300 responses.
For a recent survey sent to faculty about their commutes and housing situations, I went through several revisions after consulting with my adviser and a statistics teacher in order to make sure I was asking the right questions in a clear and unbiased way. My adviser plans to send this survey to other Bay Area schools who are willing to participate as well.
To analyze this data and make bar charts, pie charts, infographic fast facts and more, I have learned to code in Excel and R and use InDesign and various data visualization software.
See the survey we sent to Harker faculty and staff about their commutes and housing situations.
NORTHWESTERN WORKSHOP
In early November of this year, I received an email from Northwestern Medill that they would be hosting a design workshop at Medill’s San Francisco campus. The workshop promised to help high school editors “tell the story behind the numbers,” and that fascinated me. At the workshop, I learned about the intriguing intersection of data analysis and journalism.
For Issue 2 of the paper, my co-editor in chief and I planned on designing a double truck on the state of the Democratic primaries. Armed with data from a student-body survey conducted by Harker Journalism, I let the data itself tell the story. The double truck featured two sets of bar graphs – one on our own polling of the student body and one on polls of American voters at large. The double truck also used data to feature fast facts on the individual political candidates and on what issues students care about.
Housing package
In the process of writing our housing package, our group sent out two separate surveys – one for all students and one for all teachers. In the end, we garnered 284 student responses out of a total student population of just over 800 and 40 faculty responses from a total of around 90 teachers.
This survey data aided us in creating the map in the center spread of our housing package and numerous interactive graphics for the online version.
For the map, I built off the knowledge obtained from studying data science at a summer program at the University of Chicago to combine two subjects that I am passionate about, coding and journalism. Throughout my junior year, I studied the coding language R to supplement my knowledge of the languages Python and Javascript. Then, using code and survey data, I created a heat map of student and faculty commute times in the Bay Area, which will be forthcoming in the next issue of the Winged Post.
For the online version of our article, I also used the data from these surveys to create these interactive graphics shown below.
INTERACTIVE INFOGRAPHICS
EPIDEMIC PROGRESSION
When COVID-19 broke out in China, I wanted to accurately display the virus’s rapid progression across both time and space, in order for our online readers to get a sense of its scale and spread. I created an interactive infographic with red circles, symbolizing infected individuals, that scaled proportionally to each nation’s number of coronavirus cases on a day-by-day basis. I sourced data from four places: the Wuhan Health Commission, the National Health Commission of China, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
Watch the gif on the right for a day-by-day visualization of the coronavirus’s spread. Alternatively, click “Read Now” on the left for an interactive version of the same graphic.
LIVE REPORTING
During my junior year, the journalism program began to experiment with ways to take our sports coverage to the next level by pursuing more and more live coverage of sports game.
To help students and faculty experience the Homecoming game of 2019 as if they had been there, I helped cover the game live. Our team of reporters always had one person updating an online article roughly every 10 minutes. In the meantime, other reporters took photos of the match and interviewed people in the audience. In addition to periodic updates and pictures, we also made sure to update our audience on the game through social media and an Instagram live stream.
COMING OFF THE PAGE
When I cover events, I always strive to ask myself these questions: what video clips could I possibly get? What audio? How can I make this story more interactive and engaging for our online readers?
For example, when covering a school band, the Jazz Factor, playing in downtown San Jose or a water polo game on campus, I opted to take video as well as pictures. Multimedia elements such as video or audio help the viewer better appreciate the band’s music or the team’s plays. These videos would go on to supplement the online articles.
Multimedia also plays a role in large-scale events such as the March for Our Lives protest on March 24, 2018 or the annual Women’s March in San Francisco on Jan. 18, 2020. In both these events, beyond taking photos and conducting interviews, I also strove to take as much video as possible. In these cases, I thought the video footage would provide the viewer valuable information that text simply can not satisfy – specifically, the verbal chants and sound of the marches.
Read the Jazz Factor article here.