Columbia Scholastic Press Association

Newspaper Page Editing

The major goal of instruction in this sequence is to provide page editors strategic skills to lead staffers to work effectively and efficiently to produce quality writing, design and photography for publication.

Group Objective

Writing

• Students will review interviewing strategies and attribution techniques.
• Students will use interviewing skills to write news and features pieces
• Students will write feature leads and develop appropriate transitions to frame the story.
• Students will integrate quotes gathered in interviews to create substance within news, features and sports stories.
• Students will develop a quality editorial and understand the difference between the editorial and a column.
• Students will practice peer editing strategies to revise writing.
• Students will learn strategies for handling controversial or sensitive issues.
• Students will write high impact captions for news and feature photos.

Design

• Students will employ horizontal modular design techniques using approaches in Tim Harrower’s The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook.
• Students will set up an “Items to Include” lists for a news, editorial, feature and sports page.
• Students will learn appropriate photo placement in design for maximum impact.
• Students will evaluate student newspapers to determine strengths and weaknesses in design.

Photography

• Students will review what makes a good/bad photo.
• Students will review appropriate cropping for maximum impact.
• Students will set up a photo file management system to manage both print and digital images.
• Students will select photos with news value.

Editing

• Students will develop beats to gather news around school.
• Students will develop story lists for the first issue of the year.
• Students will develop a features idea file for the year (50 story ideas).
• Students will develop strategies for training new staffers assigned to pages.
• Students will develop strategies for critiquing each issue by critiquing previous issues and other student newspapers.
• Students will set up a page deadline schedule for the first month of production.

Ethics and Press Law

• Students will discuss current press law, the impact of prior review and censorship, and handling sensitive issues.

Staff Motivation and Morale

• Students will develop staff motivation and recognition strategies for the year.

Sample Assignments 

Writing: Write one each of the following types of stories:

• Personality profile.
• News story.
• Feature.
• Unsigned staff editorial.

Photography

• Set up a photo file management system for the staff.
• Select and crop photos.
• Set up a photo events calendar for the year.

Design

• Design a News/Front Page for the first issue of the school year.
• Critique one issue from your school or another school newspaper.
• Set up a production calendar for page production for the year.
• Set up a page deadline schedule for the first month of production.

Editing

• Set up a system for editing photos.
• Set up a system for editing stories.
• Set up a system for editing pages prior to sending to publisher.
• Create Feature Ideas file with 50 story ideas.
• Set up a beat system for the year.
• Plan a staff morale booster strategy to use during a stressful time during the year.

Group Instructor

Karl Grubaugh, who has an MA in journalism from the University of Missouri, is teacher/adviser of the Gazette student newspaper at Granite Bay High School, where he also teaches Advanced Placement micro- and macroeconomics.

The Gazette has won multiple CSPA Gold and Silver Crowns, NSPA Pacemakers and Quill and Scroll Gallups during Grubaugh's tenure as adviser, and his students have won hundreds of individual awards and scholarships. Grubaugh was named the Dow Jones News Fund National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year in 2008. Currently, he serves as a board member of the Journalism Education Association of Northern California.

In addition to teaching and advising, Grubaugh has professional newspaper experience as a reporter and editor in California and Missouri. He still works an occasional on-call copy editing shift at the Sacramento Bee, and he writes sporadic newspaper and magazine freelance articles.

He and his wife Tanya live in Cameron Park, Calif., with their three children, Lauren, 21 (a UCLA senior in the fall); Connor, 17 (a college freshman somewhere in California, Washington or on the East Coast in the fall); and Garrett, 14 (a high school freshman in the fall).

Quick Downloads

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Requirements

• Newspaper's stylebook (if you have one)
• One complete set of your 2011-12 newspapers
• Pens, pencils and erasers
• Notebook
• Dictionary and thesaurus (paperback or online)
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Laptop with Photoshop and InDesign installed
• Working knowledge of all equipment and software