Struggles with the stories and some new ideas

We had our editing day today where the section editors read all of the stories, and I worked on photo editing with the new students. Most of my students were quite happy with the work that was being done this week. We have a lot of new students in the class, and it was hard to nurse their first stories, but hopefully many of them found success.

Of the stories we are covering this week with a special emphasis on the social responsibility role, we have made some good progress. These are the ones I am most excited about:

Sports-How much money is spent on each athletic team including averages per person and where it comes from. (This has been a two month story with cooperation from the Athletic Director.)

I read a rough draft of this story yesterday, and I sent the writer back to the Athletic Director to get some clarification. The A.D. has been surprisingly forthcoming with info. It will work out to be a great story, but it needed to be refocused. The reporter is focusing on the cost o playing sports at our school. Including what the athletic fees pay for, how much revenue each sport brings in, questions about sponsorships from athletic manufactures and how much it costs to run each sport. He found out that our state champion basketball team brings in the most revenue, but it costs $1,000 less to run our basketball program than it does to run our volleyball program. Sports are not funded based on their popularity or revenue generation; some of the sports that are least popular are the most expensive to run.

C-spread- Racism at our school in the context of black history month celebrations.

This is going to turn out to be one of our most powerful spreads we have done. The editor has a fantastic design and has written a 1,000 word story. We will go in depth with this issue instead of telling a bunch of smaller interesting pieces of info in sidebar format. This is an important story for our school with a growing minority population that previous staffs have tried to tackle rather immaturely. I am confident this staff will do it much better.

BackPage- The things we carry. What students use and carry on a daily basis and how it may be harming them. (Overloaded backpacks, loud earphones & etc.)

We have a lot of kids working on this story that are very interested in helping. This will focus on many things our kids use every day that have long term consequences for them. It has been pretty easy to get this, as it involved research and some readily available info. Still the reporter went to the nurse and a health teacher who is particularly concerned about student well-being to get some local context, and interviewed several students who are known to always wear headphones and carry heavy backpacks. The art for this page will be really good, and the editor has a history of doing really great, socially responsible things.

Next week, we'll be putting it all together, and my writers will be working on a new set of stories.