Editing, Leadership & Team Building
Throughout my years in journalism, leadership has meant different things with the different roles I have taken on. Starting freshman year as an Intern, I prioritized setting an example for my classmates through working diligently on my stories. After becoming a Staff Reporter halfway through my freshman year I began taking on more stories and contributing more to our publication. By sophomore year, I became the News Section Editor and made it my goal to teach my mentee and our staff about the art of news writing and keep our community informed on pressing issues. After working as a pages the year prior, junior year allowed me to elevate my leadership skills as Managing Editor. With this position I was able to become a mentor to the whole class including our editors through my knowledge on writing, design and photography. As a member of our executive board, have been able to implement new processes for our class and educate our staff on the reporting process in order to ensure our publication is of the highest quality.
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All About North Pointe Guide
The biggest project I’ve taken on as Editor-in-Chief is creating the North Pointe Guidebook. This packet serves as a resource for our staff, containing detailed information about each section and page of the newspaper. It also includes guides for various types of journalistic writing, ensuring that staff members are well-prepared to tackle any story, even if it’s their first time writing one. My goal with this guidebook was to provide our team with the tools and confidence needed to excel in their roles and produce high-quality work.
Click on the cover to view the guide
Page reads
A constant struggle for us as a publication was spending endless hours working on pages at our Production and Lock nights. Despite working for long periods of time, I felt that we were redoing work on our Lock Nights, and design elements that should have been completed prior to Prod Night were being done as we locked pages. In order to combat these issues I created a Prod Night and Lock Night page read, guiding editors on all of the fields that should be completed before entering the journalism room on each given day. Through establishing this part of the publishing process, editors, staff reporters, interns, and members of exec, myself included, were able to better understand what work needed to be completed before we sent pages by having a visual representation of our progress. On the Lock Night when we established this process, we felt more confident on our progress and finished earlier than any other issue during the year.
Mini Lessons & Icebreakers
Mini-lessons and icebreakers are essential for building a collaborative and comfortable team environment. These activities foster trust and communication, ensuring that staff members can effectively work together. Teaching the staff about journalistic writing and design is crucial for maintaining high standards and consistency in the publication. By providing guidance on writing techniques and design principles, you empower your team to produce quality work and contribute confidently to the overall success of the publication.
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Click on Each to view
Editing
As Editor-in-Chief, I ensure all stories are high-quality, engaging, and factual by conducting second reads and helping writers improve their work. I also oversee page editing, locking pages and giving final approval before publication. Spending time in InDesign, I teach page editors how to use the program, troubleshoot issues, and refine layouts, while also providing feedback on annotated pages from previous issues. My goal is to maintain our publication’s standards while building skills that editors can share with others.
My stack of Pages to edit on Lock Night
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Mentorship
Since my sophomore year of high school, I have had the privilege of serving as a mentor to numerous interns as they begin their journey in journalism. As part of the process, we guide them through writing stories and creating art in order to support their journey to promotion. In addition to assisting them as interns, our mentorship is a continuous process. I make it a point to remain available to offer help whenever it's needed. This ongoing guidance helps every staff member feels supported and empowered to succeed.
Throwback to My promotion in February 2022
Traditions
As a member of the executive board, I have the responsibility of overseeing our yearly traditions. My personal favorite is our Issue Awards after each newspaper cycle. This allows us to recognize staff members for their contributions, regardless of their position. Additionally, we do People's Choice Awards, highlighting our staff's best work ranging from Pumpkin Decorating to story ledes. Aside from these practices that have been in place before I entered North Pointe, this year our executive board started a new tradition of creating a vision statement to share at our annual North Pointe Launch. This allows our staff to have a clear idea of our goals each year.
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