There is no prior review for content produced by the WLHSnow Journalism programs and I take that very seriously in my leadership positions. As the Editor in Chief of two programs that produce content for the community to consume, I make sure that the content that we produce is fair and accurate.
One of the first things that I make sure the staff learns is to record all of the interviews that they get in order to have accurate documentation of what the person said as well as keeping in mind the overall context of their words. Along with that, I want the staff to make sure that they interview multiple kinds of people in order to get multiple sides to the story. I encourage each story to have quotes from different grades, genders, positions on a sports team, coaches as well as athletes, teachers as well as students, backstage crew as well as the main role, etc.
Part of getting a variety of sources has driven the 2017-2018 yearbook staff to want to get new people covered in this book. As a staff, we made a goal to cover each person three times and in doing that we will cover the people who have never been covered in the yearbook during their high school career. The seniors who have never been in the book are called “zeros” because they have a zero next to their name in our coverage list. My personal goal is to make sure that every “zero” is turned into a “one” and then we can reach our goal of getting every student in the book three times.
For each deadline for Yearbook, I like to keep statistics of how many new people were covered as well as tracking different visuals and how many zeros were turned into ones.
The Green & Gold Yearbook has been putting a huge effort into transitioning from a “scrapbook” to a memorable and journalistic storybook. As journalists, I believe that it is our job to be the voice for the voiceless and to tell everyone’s story, especially in the yearbook. I teach the staff to not be a cheerleader and to remove editorializing from their writing in order to tell a fair, unbiased story.
Part of that process falls to deciding which story gets the dominant module space on the spread. I encourage the staff to move away from only putting sports stories as the dominant story simply because those provide the easiest pictures. I want other kinds of stories to get the dominant space and that pushes the staff to move out of their comfort zone and to reach people that wouldn’t normally be reached.
Emily Rebekah Martin 