Anyone want to give advice on how to improve my school's newspaper next year?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
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<p>So, I'm going to be Editor-in-Chief of my HS newspaper next year. In the glorious days of it's past, it used to win national awards and such. But in the last 10 years or so, things have really gone down hill. </p>

<p>We have trouble getting people to take the class, so much that there are only about 12 people this year (1 of which who CANNOT write). I would like at least 20 people next year, good, dedicated writers/photographers. How do I get capable people to join? Any tips on improving newspaper quality that you want to share?</p>

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<p>lol I’m in the same boat!!!
My J2 class will have like ~17 people, but its really gone downhill since the old Jteacher left.</p>

<p>Unfortunately I do not have any tips at the moment :frowning:
but I sympathize with you! I’m sure you’ll think of something, just relax and start brainstorming how you can uniquely impact your situation</p>

<p>good luck!</p>

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<p>^ yeah, it’s gotten to the point that people throw our newspapers in the trash. I just want a better quality newspaper, but have no idea where to start.</p>

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<p>My newspaper is in the same position, and I hope to be an editor next year because I really want to change it. But at my school you don’t have to be in Journalism to do the newspaper. A goal of mine would be to create a good website that people would actually want to visit, and have as many news stories written as possible. Right now, there’s a lot of crap in the paper, basically filler that often consists of a simple summary if uninteresting basic information about a school event. The problem is people don’t go in depth at all, and thus, many articles consist of what the student body already knew anyway. There are no quality controls, so if it is text on a page, it basically ends up in the paper no matter what, and that’s why people barely glance our paper over.</p>

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<p>12 people? You need to persuade more people to join next year! :] </p>

<p>Hmm, maybe you should ask around to see what people like to read about the most. I’m not in Journalism but my English teacher is also the J2 teacher, plus lost of my friends are part of their staff, so I know what they do.</p>

<p>Are sports a big thing? Our last two pages are always dedicated to school sports games and wins/losses. Usually its summaries about the larger wins/losses, and comments about the people would stood out in the games, etc. We also 1/2 columns on NCAA/professional sports and chart with wins/losses.</p>

<p>Is there an opinion pro/con column? Those are always interesting, we just pick any popular topic to argue about and the opinion editors will debate on it. Your newspaper does not always have to have entire articles, add humor, create lists, put in extreme advice to students. During prom season for example, we had a section for advice for guys about prom, it was really really funny. :stuck_out_tongue:
We have book/movie/sometimes local restaurant reviews, the editors actually put their own ratings on movies, musics and whatnot. it may be controversial, but it was an interesting read nevertheless. We have a picture page, just a visual summary of the month (our papers are monthly.) usually of assemblies, friday activities, dances, sports, etc.
my favorite issue is always the last one, for our feature section, its the class of _____ college list, always very interesting, to me at least. Plus we have senior wills, the graduating seniors leave/dedicate anything to their lower class friends, usually the thigns they put are pretty extreme and funny, but it is still censored by our teacher.</p>

<p>hope this helps! and good luck.</p>

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<p>Lol, it’s gotten so bad at my school that we literally had an issue where two people had to write like eight articles… Unfortunately, I’m only in journalism I this year, so I don’t get to write articles yet (which is, to be honest, completely ridiculous, but then our teacher is ridiculous :)). Next year, I want to completely revamp the paper, though.</p>

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<p>When the editors of my school paper went around recruiting, they said that it looks really good on your resume for college… so a few people joined.
Also, my school forces students to take journalism when they’re having trouble finding other classes, lol.</p>

<p>At the worst we’ve only had 7 people on our staff.</p>

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<p>I put up flyers around school and stuff, but it didn’t really work that well. My newspaper teacher says (a bit to optimisitcally, in my opinion) that we might have around 15 people next year, but I am dreading only having like 10. And I’m a bit afraid they might cut the class if there aren’t enough people. People have already registered for their classes next year, so I don’t know what to do now. I want more people!</p>

<p>This year, everyone gets 4-5 articles because there aren’t enough people and I have to take pictures since there’s no photographer. Last year there was 18 in the class, so the most anyone got was 3. And there will only be me and 3 other people continuing the class next year, so we’re short of 2 editors.
Basically we have sections with two pages each:
News
Community
Features
Opinion
Sports
Entertainment</p>

<p>I’ve noticed people like reading the Secret Shopper reviews I manage to get into the community section every issue (which I enjoy writing the most, hehehe), as well as movie reviews. I dunno, I just want the newspaper to be more widely read. My school is stupid, they don’t want to read stuff that would be in an actual newspaper. I want the paper to be more fun to read, and funny, and leave the hard-hitting articles for the News section. A couple of years ago (before I was in HS) the newspaper was hilarious, the articles entertaining. Now, not so much. I think it’s mostly because the quality of the actual staff writers is pretty bad. Not many are even good writers, so I end up having to edit, to make it at least passable. The problem is, the kids who are actually good writers are better students, so instead of choosing newspaper as an elective, they take another AP class.</p>

<p>Maybe I’m being to negative. I think we placed 4th or 5th in the county last year, which isn’t too bad. But before that we used to place ~2nd, so definitely a downward trend. And we no longer know how to put color in for competition issues, after last years seniors graduated. And I don’t really like how the front page looks -mostly box, box, picture, with grayboxes to break up text. But I want columns and lines (basically how a real newspaper front page looks like) and a “Look what’s in this issue” box on the top w/pictures like we used to have years ago. </p>

<p>Erghh I don’t know how to explain it, but I just want the newspaper to be the best it can possibly be…</p>

<p>Any cool columns you guys feature reguarly in your newspapers that people like to read? We have the secret shoppers, rants and raves (what we’re mad and happy about)…i was wondering if I should bring back this hilarious “confusion column” where we ask people unanswerable questions like “what’s the speed of dark,” or whatever? What d’ya think? Any ideas? :p</p>

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<p>bump?..any more advice would be helpful:)</p>

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<p>I have the same problem!!!1111</p>

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<p>haha…seems like all our school newspapers are on rocky ground (i guess it parallels the real-life situations of newspapers)
we need a support group or something for frazzled editors.</p>

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<p>Do student biographies of random students, maybe do “A look into the class of…”, local restaurant reviews, movie reviews, things that have happened in school (Sorry, obvious one), current events. Our school newspaper has all these things and literally EVERYONE picks up a newspaper and gets into a brawl trying to get the last copy. That’s about 2000+ people, lol.</p>

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<p>Do something controversial, like depicting Muhammad.</p>

<p>National media will focus on your “small-town school newspaper that sparked a nationwide debate”, and the publicity will help you to raise funds for future publications.</p>

<p>…if there are future publications.</p>

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<p>^ haha no thanks…my advisor wouldn’t let us anyways…when there is any “serious” news in our community she won’t let us put anything about it in the newspaper (For ex, last year there was a molester targeting students walking home from school; also a baseball coach got fired for bad conduct w/ a minor; somebody commited suicide, etc) We’re not allowed to cover any of that, and I don’t really think I would want too.</p>

<p>Plus newspapers ALWAYS get shut down if anything controversial is in it.</p>

<p>@sqdwe13. We have some of those things already, but people STILL don’t read it. I guess it’s because the majority of the people at my school don’t like reading. I’m starting to think maybe the methods that would work anywhere else don’t apply at my school…ergghhhhh.</p>

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<p>That reminds me what happened after that newspaper in Denmark published. It resulted in a 3 month boycott from middle-eastern countries.</p>

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<p>^ Yeah, that was kind of where I got the idea from. ;)</p>

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Lol, I don’t think any of them read the Danish newspaper in the first place.</p>

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Shame. Ya gotta fight the power!!!</p>

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<p>^ how do you do those quote boxes?</p>

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<p>^ Without the period.</p>

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<p>

I’ve been wondering how to do this for ages :)</p>

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<p>Hmmm…what do you think about a “Fix It!” column, like students say a problem with the school…like I dunno, a pretty lame example, err- air conditioning doesn’t work in a room?</p>

<p>actually maybe that’s a bad idea bc I got it from the county newspaper, and I NEVER read that column…</p>

<p>hmmm…<em>brain thinking furiously</em></p>

<p>I really just don’t know what I can do anymore. Maybe just leave the newspaper how it is? I mean, improve the writing as much as possible, but I don’t think students at my school are going to read it nomatter what I do, unless we put test answers on there or something…haha jk.</p>