Austin speaking:
Pitching story ideas is always one of the most fun parts about newspaper. After we send an issue to the press, we immediately get to work on the next. Basically, everyone fills out a sheet with ideas for each section of the paper. We sit in the conference room down the hall from the journalism room (how prestigious) and go around in a circle, letting each staff member pitch their favorite ideas. Us editors write down all of the ideas on a whiteboard in the room and when everyone is done sharing, we just narrow it down. Although it’s much more difficult than it sounds, it’s always fun to see what our staff comes up with.
Kristina speaking:
Story ideas are absolutely the most critical part of putting together a quality newspaper. Without interesting ideas, the paper simply becomes a mess of random thoughts and photos. When we have the staff brainstorm story ideas, we try to encourage them go out of their way and ask other students and teachers what they want to learn about in the next issue. It’s amazing what you’ll think of by just asking others people’s opinions. I feel so lucky that the people on our staff are so different and have a variety of interests and talents; this helps our paper cover news about almost every type of student. We aim to attract a diverse population, we want this to be a paper that everyone can be interested in.
Hanna speaking:
This week I had someone ask me how we come up with story ideas for the newspaper. How do we decide what to write about? Thus, while contemplating what to write for the blog this week, this topic was created. When we plan print issues, everyone on staff fills out a story ideas sheet. They have to list two ideas for each section of the paper (news, feature, sports, opinion, etc.). While we have to make everyone come up with a certain number of stories so that we can have ideas for the paper, this method is also the reason we get ideas like “snow.” Honestly, what does that even mean? After we consolidate all of our ideas, we narrow them down for the issue. So there you go, now you know.
