Editing, Leadership and Team Building
When I first started in journalism, I was extremely introverted. Over the years, I have opened up and found a love for leadership and mentoring those younger than me to prepare for the future. In the past two years, I have been able to serve as a Journalism I Facilitator, Photography Editor and now the Editor-in-Chief for the iliad, some of my favorite positions I have served in while on staff. In these positions, I have learned to edit and conference, as well as step up to be someone whom staffers looked up to and could go to for help.
Journalism I
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Editing and Conferencing
During my junior and senior years, I have served as a Journalism I facilitator. As a facilitator, I serve as an upperclassmen mentor to freshman journalism students through editing stories and assignments and conferencing over their work. During the writing process, I provide detailed feedback to help them produce the best final product. After the deadline, I edit several students’ pieces, then hold individual conferences to walk them through edits and develop a game plan to help them polish their stories.
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Teaching
Although Journalism I largely involves editing and conferencing, I also have the opportunity to teach and lead lessons on various topics such as photography, AP style, news writing, editorials and more. In these lessons, I go over in-depth explanations and we analyze various examples to ensure a full understanding of each topic. These lessons allow Journalism I students to explore and discover a little bit about all the areas of journalism before joining staff.
ODYSSEY
Leadership seminars
As part of training in our staff, members of the Editorial Board are required to attend semiregular leadership seminars. While the topic of each seminar varies, each seminar focuses on improving one aspect of leadership. I began attending leadership seminars a sophomore year, and have heard from a variety of speakers and participated in a range of activities to build myself as a leader including discovering and learning about my leadership style.
Team On-Site Prodcution Editing
During the fall semester, the journalism class held weekly writing competitions in order to generate content for the website. For the competitions, I was responsible for editing and conferencing with each team over their feature stories and multimedia. During my editing process, I would address missing information, possible additional stakeholders, visual quality, story checklists, grammar and AP style edits. In the end, one of the stories was published in the magazine and another two went on the website after rigorous editing and hard work from myself and the writers.
Presenting at SIPA
My sophomore year, I presented at the Southern Interscholastic Press Association over social media with one of my colleagues. During the presentation, I shared the strategies and types of posts that we use and create to share insight to help other media staffers build and grow their social media platforms. During the presentation, I helped engage audience members and lead interactive activities to teach them about social media.
Photo by Krista Shumaaker
Contest Submissions
One of the roles that I have taken on within the program is contest submissions. Our program submits to a large number of contests throughout the year. Contest submissions are quite tedious and require a lot of organization to complete them successfully. Over time I have figured out how to generate planning documents and best execute to ensure we submit the best work from our staffers, as well as train others on how to execute the submission process.
SIPA Advisory Board
The Southern Interscholastic Press Association is a conference that our staff attends annually in Columbia, South Carolina. Attending SIPA for the first time was a transformative experience for me, seeing student journalists from all over the South come together to learn about storytelling and push our knowledge. For my senior year, I applied to be on the advisory board and currently serve as the Member-At-Large to help ensure the conference is the same enjoyable experience for younger student journalists.
Photo by Krista Shumaker
Team Bonding
iliad
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Leading EdBoard Meetings
As a Co-EIC of the iliad, I lead Editorial Board meetings every Thursday to ensure that the production of our magazine stays on track. During these meetings, we revisit our job descriptions, cover our to-do lists, discuss magazine production and brainstorm ideas for club meetings. While iliad has a small editorial board of only seven people, our meetings remain productive and beneficial to the program.
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Leading LT Meetings
Similar to the Editorial Board, the iliad Leadership Team engages in weekly meetings over the status of the program. These meetings focus on more behind-the-scenes action, intending to deal with staff management and organization. In these meetings, we discuss staff performance, future deadlines and the status of magazine elements such as theme and design.
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Jane Doe Issue
Recently a staff member posted on social media expressing dissatisfaction with our program and publication. This post was a breach of the staff contract, so I was required to address the issue sensitively. I bought it to the attention of my adviser and we had a restorative justice circle with her and the editor of the news publication. While the incident was an affront against our staff, I engaged in conversation in hopes of finding areas where I could improve our staff to make it a better experience for everyone.
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Production Calender
The spring semester is when the iliad begins the major part of production for our annual magazine. Over winter break, my colleagues and I designed the production calendar for different elements of the magazine to ensure we stuck to the production cycle and can get our magazine out on time. We also use the calendar to manage staffers and club meetings throughout the spring. The calendar continues to be updated through the semester, as we move closer to finishing the magazine.
Communication
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Group Chats
To ensure effective and constant communication, all the staffs I am on have group chats to engage in conversation about posts, deadlines, and more. These group chats help ensure timely coverage and posting.
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Outside of Class Meetings
In addition to frequent meetings in school and conversations within the class, the iliad LT often schedules outside-of-class meetings. During these meetings, we accomplish additional work and game plans for upcoming weeks.
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Group Me
In addition to Group Chats, I use GroupMe to communicate with students and members of the SIPA Advisory Board. GroupMe is an easy way to ensure inclusion and communication to everyone on staff.