Audience Engagement
At the end of the day, while writing, editing, and designing are all key roles within our program, I still have a critical responsibility to our staff to ensure that their hard work and effort is being paid off through spreading, sharing, and promoting their work to real-life people. None of this could be possible without a large group of people, all working in harmony to make sure that our publication is able to reach as many people as possible; these are just some of the ways that I use my role as a leader in the program to achieve these ends.
Advertising
Advertising can be a tedious yet critical part of running our publication, as local businesses, even teen-catered ones, have been hesitant to spend money on ads since the onset of the pandemic. However, through setting affordable prices and requiring for each staff member to reach out to a minimum number of businesses each year, we ensure that we will always have a steady income flow in order to cover the cost of new equipment and printing hundreds of newspapers each issue.
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Printing
We are fortunate enough to have found a printer who charges us a fair price for the printing of our color newspaper; however, this does not mean that the final product is free from errors. Whether it be a smaller error like the one pictured to the right or something as large as an entire page printing in black-and-white, my co-editor-in-chief and I are always sure to alert our adviser of any errors so that the printer can be made aware of the problem in order for them to either issue a refund or simply use extra precaution next time.
Distribution
We distribute to the entire school based on the number of students and staff in the room during second block, our distribution time. Earlier this year, I volunteered to canvas the school during an off period in order to make the map more accurate, as many rooms were noticeably being given too many copies, causing our program's money to go to waste. After I recounted the number of newspapers needed for each room, we were able to more accurately distribute our resources in order to reach the maximum number of community members.
Recurring Features
Whether it be gleaned from simple overheard hallway chatter or direct conversations, it's not hard to notice that our newspaper's fun, recurring features are what often create the greatest audience response. While these are often simpler and require far less journalistic "work" than the rest of the content in our newspaper, we believe that they are an important staple of our place in the community, and any method to draw new potential readers in is always very much appreciated.
Who Knows You Better?
Who Knows You Better? (or WKYB?) is a feature based off of three students, two of whom try to guess the "subject"'s response to any given five questions. I typically set this feature up in a blank note in my Notes app so that I can keep track of responses before transferring them over to the feature's eye-catching, trademark design that runs at the bottom of features pages. This feature is a great way to highlight students and their interests, and seeing readers react to the monthly results is always undoubtedly enjoyable.
The Crosspector
Due largely in part to my co-editor-in-chief's affinity for perusing old issues of our newspaper, we decided to bringing back one of the publication's old recurring features this year: a monthly themed crossword puzzle, aptly named "The Crosspector." I had the task of writing and designing the first two new versions of the puzzle, which was ultimately just as much fun for me as it was for anyone who took the time to complete it.
The second, which tied directly into our coverage of the girls' cross country team's state victory, also further encouraged readers to appreciate our staff's hard work by designing the puzzle so that answers could only be found within the stories, stats and graphics within the cross country spread. We also take advantage of our multimedia status with the Crosspector, posting the answers to our social media accounts on the day of distribution to create more harmony between different platforms.
Web/Social Media Engagement
While as editor-in-chief I do not oversee either our publication's website or any of our social media accounts, our program as a whole is constantly working together in order to promote each platform's work wherever and whenever possible. This comes in the form of refers to many of our multimedia projects in the print newspaper, as well as much of the reverse when it comes to social media.
Online Story
Social Media Refer
Print Refer
Broadcast Story
Print Refer
News Literacy
The Prospector has been and has remained a trusted and reliable source of news in the Prospect community ever since I joined staff in 2019. While it can be admittedly difficult to get newspapers into student's hands, I and the rest of the program take pride in knowing that we provide informed, unique, and insightful information and opinion that is relevant to the school community. Though a suburban high school can at times feel like a lackluster source for newsworthy topics, I believe that one of my greatest strengths as a journalist --- and one of the greatest strengths of our staff as a whole --- is finding unconventional and undiscussed topics laden within everyday life at Prospect, telling stories that display to the reader why our high school newspaper is one worth reading.
Editorials
One prime example of how our staff contributes to facilitating discourse and promoting new ideas in our school is through our staff editorials. These editorials, by their very nature, are a call to action for the average reader to open their eyes to one or more of the problems or issues that may go unnoticed or unchanged in day-to-day life, and honing our specific call to action --- one that always begins with "We, KnightMedia," --- is always one of our top priorities.
My personal favorite editorial that I have written is "Flipping class, perspectives," which I wrote for Issue #5 last year. The emerging "flipped classroom" structure in math classes had always been a source of quiet grumbling and backtalk, a discontentment which was only bolstered by the effects of virtual learning. This made it a ripe topic for our publication to delve further into for the sake of giving readers a more educated basis of knowledge about the subject. Thus, over the course of several hours of research and multiple interviews with staff members and students, I formed a conclusion that I had not expected whatsoever going in.
While the flipped classroom had the potential to be a highly positive force for learning, I argued, student attitudes are still not something to be ignored; the incorporation of elements from both flipped and standard classrooms, such as those detailed by one source, should be considered going forward to balance student opinions and slowly grow the acceptance of the new structure over time.
I greatly enjoyed the process that led to the final call to action I included. In my mind, the unpredictability of going into an editorial topic is exciting; it can lead to any number of different conclusions, all of which test one's mettle to report for the good of the school community.
National Topics at a Local Scale
While many students may have more personal investment in stories that impact them directly at the local and school level, another equally important aspect of promoting news literacy at our school is providing them with coverage and analysis of larger topics that exist on a national or international scale.
This is always best achieved, in my mind, with a local hook that gives even the most apathetic of news consumers a reason to care about an important subject before providing them with the important information and perspectives that they need to know to be informed citizens. For example, my story about the overturning of Roe v. Wade in Issue #7 of last year used its local hook to inform our readers about what this decision would actually mean for the lives of Prospect community members, ensuring that the average reader is given a reason to care while still learning the important details about the situation.
This was a difficult topic to write about given its controversial nature, but I and the rest of our executive board felt that it was a topic that the Prospect community deserved to have told from the perspective of their own community.
Facilitating Discourse
I believe systems such as comments on our website and on social media --- in addition to our advertisement in the Prospector concerning letters to the editor --- are important tools that facilitate discussion about our writing and reporting. While these may not always be comfortable conversations to have, their inclusion is necessary to ensure that our readers are aware of our commitment to creating informed and civil discourse about issues that matter to our readers.
