How to Fulfill Your Role as an Editor

Editor's Note: Anyali Fontanez and Nashita Moula from PressPassNYC provide a guide for to become an inspiring editor in high school newspapers.

"Students working on Wikipedia editing, Norway, January 2018" by Jorid Martinsen (WMNO) is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

You’ve been promoted from staff-writer to editor in your school news publication. and now you must navigate the process of leading a productive news publication—but where do you start?

When students transition from a staff-writing position to a leadership position for their school newspaper, it can feel overwhelming. You're tasked with the daunting job of running a news publication and this can be a nearly impossible task to do on your own. In order to not overload yourself with work it’s important to find a work balance with your editors.

While many publications choose to divide the word by sections such as news, features, sports, and opinion, we find that it is better to split the work among editors no matter their dedicated  section. We do this because some sections get more articles uploaded than others and some of our editors might have other responsibilities.

Communication is important in ensuring that your newspaper can produce articles consistently and be more productive. Communication can look different depending on what fits your publication—Google Chat, Messenger, Signal, WhatsApp, Slack and GroupMe are personal favorites for keeping in contact with your board of editors!

On the other hand, communication with your writers is just as important as it is with your editors. In order to relay information in an organized manner, our publication chooses to have a Google Classroom. This way, we can mass send out reminders, important announcements, opportunities and provide resources with just a click of a button. 

Weekly check-ins can also be useful for you and your staff. You could send individual emails to your writers asking about progress, next steps, and see if they have any questions that need to be answered. You can also send general emails to your whole staff; however, this is mostly helpful with sharing changes or news that affect everyone and is not so much writing focused.

Sometimes meeting in person is better than communicating through email or text. If your newspaper is a class of its own students taken during the school day, that’s great! However, if your publication doesn’t do that or meet consistently after school then we would suggest meeting at least once a week after school even if it’s just for 30 minutes. Try polling or asking your staff what time and days works best for them. During your meetings, students can seek out help from editors or other writers or use that time to just write. 

Although communication is very important for publication productivity. Organization on who’s doing what is even more important.

You can use Google Sheets in order to track information about who the writer is, their email, article idea, link to their planning doc (containing their questions, interviews, and angles), link to their article, photo, and who took the photo.

By using this system in Google Sheets, you can gain access to your writers’ articles, edit them when needed, and have everything you need in one place!

Leading a publication can be intimidating, but with the right work balance and proper communication, it’ll be worth it when you see your newspaper begin to flourish—it is just a matter of getting started on the right foot.