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Newspaper Deadlines

James, 10/10/2005, 10:48:00 PM

How do your papers set up deadlines? Ours go: Rough Draft, next class is final draft, thursday on the week before printing is first deadline night, and monday before printing is final deadline night. The paper then comes out on Friday. How do you do it and how late on deadlines are you usually?

Responses

Amanda, 10/11/2005, 10:17:15 AM
This is my second year of running our school's high school newspaper. We meet 3 times a week for an elective (45 minute) period.

Now granted, we only publish a paper once a month, instead of every week. But this schedule has proved to be effective for me:

We have a brainstorming session at the beginning of each new issue. We discuss current local, school, and national topics. The last 15 minutes or so are given to the students for individual searching online for topic ideas. At the beginning of the second class, each student must sign up for an article topic of their choice. In addition, each staff member is assigned either an editorial position (one for each section of the paper) or a feature assignment (jokes, games, monthly announcements, sports, etc.). Any topics that I think should be addressed that isn't chosen, is then assigned to various staff members at the beginning of the next class period.

Deadlines are usually as follows: rough drafts due into section editors two weeks before paper is due to come out. Editors have 2 days to edit their articles, and return to staff members for editing. Second draft is due approximately 3-5 days later, and then articles are given to me for final copy proofing. One week is given for editors to put the paper into publishing format (while other "lower" staff members are working on their next issue's articles), and then all students share the responsibility of selling the paper to the greater school population.

In addition, I have found it helpful for grading puposes, to make students accountable by using a weekly "work" sheet, which is due on Friday. Each staff member must account for their daily work on this sheet. They list websites they visited and work that was accomplished. This helps me to keep track of everyone on busy days where I might be helping just one specific group with editing or publishing.