leadership.
my approach to leadership.
During this time, we discuss monthly editorial ideas — which I oversee as the main Managing Opinions Editor — as well as the progress of our staff.
During these meetings, we round-robin with our Board members to check in both on their roles and their personal life going-ons. We decide our Writer of the Week at these meetings as well as discuss any issues that may be going on at a time.
Fortunately, this year has been relatively smooth with our school newspaper — our entire team is on top of every aspect this year. We faced many internal and external challenges on the Pathfinder last year, but those challenges left me with the ability to learn how to persevere through difficulties and it has only made us, as a staff, stronger.
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- Awards Coordinator -
In addition to being Editor-in-Chief, I’m also the Pathfinder's Awards Coordinator, which means I’m constantly organizing and scheduling dates for our site badges, as well as reviewing submissions and articles for contests. It’s a lot of work, but since I love reading the various articles on the Pathfinder, it doesn’t feel like work. I review and submit the highest quality stories to various contests.
In addition, I am also in charge of the SNO Distinguished Sites badge list. In our first semester, we were able to receive four badges — Coverage, Site Excellence, Best of SNO, and Engagement. This was a really big deal for us since, though we ultimately received the Distinguished Site status, the previous year was incredibly stressful, and we waited until almost the last minute to complete each badge. This year, I am happy to say that we began working on our badges as soon as our stories began flooding in, which helped a lot regarding the badges we could submit.
Throughout my portfolio, you will hear me refer to both myself and the staff in the plural sense: “we.” It’s important to me that our newspaper as a whole is highlighted; and while I had a hand in everything I discuss throughout the portfolio, I can’t — and don’t — do it alone.
I am one of three Editors-in-Chief for the Pathfinder, as well as the Pathfinder’s Awards Coordinator. Our staff isn’t ginormous, but the Pathfinder has always been a student-led newspaper, meaning that although Convergence Journalism is a class, the Editors-in-Chief are the ones who decide how each story will be graded by the adviser, the ones who handle conflict — whether that’s internal or external conflict — and the ones who provide opportunities for growth for our writers.
In my time in various activities throughout my high school career, I’ve learned that one can have a title and hardly do anything with it. That’s exactly the type of nominal leadership I want to avoid. I’m very active and assertive in the goals that I have for our staff and our news site.
For the past two years, I have guided our staff in developing their writing, providing regular feedback, and creating a collaborative, interactive environment. Being a staff member, then an A&E/Opinions editor, and finally, Editor-in-Chief, I have learned that leadership isn’t just a list of adjectives that one can check off; instead, leadership is built by constructing meaningful relationships with others as well as holding others — as well as myself — accountable, and it is a task that never truly ends. Pertaining to journalism, I consider it my duty to nurture and continue to develop the Pathfinder as a student newspaper.
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- Editorial Leadership -
As A&E/Opinions Editor in my junior year, I worked with the staff to curate stories for our site. To keep track, I created an Opinions/A&E spreadsheet, where I’d monitor the status of stories in my section — red for overdue, yellow for approved but not finished, and green for approved and finished. According to the past Editors-in-Chief, this organization pattern was one of the reasons why I was chosen as Awards Coordinator.
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Now, as Editor-in-Chief, my responsibility is to the entire Pathfinder, which includes editing stories, instituting grading guidelines, uploading stories, and serving as a figurehead of Parkway West’s journalism program.
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Every week, the other Editors-in-Chief and I will typically hold a meeting on Friday before school. During this time, we discuss the progress of our staff, any concerns we have with the site or members of the staff, the statuses of our badges, and any other vital agenda task items.
By working extensively with A&E and Opinions, I gained a fondness for my sections in particular. When I became EIC, I was sad to give those sections up, but glad that I could train the two new editors who would be taking my spot. I wrote practice stories for them to edit on — which could possibly count as the worst stories I've ever written in my scholastic journalism career — both in the beginning and at the end of the first semester. It is important to mark their progress in editing so that not only can we set goals for improvement, but recognize how much they have grown.
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- Communication -
Another essential part of leadership is communication. At the beginning of the school year, we decided to make the switch from GroupMe to Google Teams. We have four group chats — one for the entire journalism staff (which includes Pawhesi, the Pathfinder’s yearbook counterpart), one for the Pathfinder staff as a whole, one for the Editorial Board, and one for the EICs.
Through these means of communication, we let our staff members and junior editors know of important updates and changes to our program to keep them involved and engaged with the state of our newspaper.
We also use emails to let writers know if their pitch has been accepted or if there are any questions we have about a particular story.
More informally, I use text messaging to reach our staff and editors, since texting can often be a quicker, simpler alternative to emails.
I’ve also continued check-ins, a communication strategy we borrowed from the 2021-2022 Editors-in-Chief. Every Monday, I check in with each individual and we talk about the status of their stories and if they need anything from me.
For writers who may be struggling, we talk to find viable solutions, whether that’s tweaking the original pitch into a more realistic idea or discussing options for partnership and collaboration. If a particular writer is caught up or being an absolute rockstar with their deadlines, typically, the conversation will veer toward other things, like writers’ personal lives.
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- Grading -
This year, we mulled over different ways of grading after a couple of years of insufficient grading strategies. We came up with a new system that gave our staff writers the independence to suggest their own deadlines, based on the enormity of their project, and even their final grade on their story.
By category, we determined the baseline amount of points for a long or short story, adding criteria for clarity. For example, if a staff writer chooses to write an Opinions story, they have two options: 1) Long Opinions story — a story that is required to have at least 1,250 words and two interviews, which earns the writer 25 points, or 2) Short Opinions story — a story that is required to have two interviews and earns the writer 15 points. To encourage interactivity and features that go beyond the text, we award extra points for infographics and multimedia like videos or photographs as well.
We have a similar system for editorials that I also created. After noticing some problems with meeting editorial deadlines last year, I created a guide of expectations for our Editorial Board so that each story is published in a timely manner while maintaining the consistency and quality of the Pathfinder’s editorials.
We also decided that, to hold our Editorial Board members accountable, it was necessary to create a policy around expected behaviors, and we put these expectations in a handout that we gave to all of our Board members at the beginning of the year.
Every week, the other Editors-in-Chief and I will typically hold a meeting on Friday before school. During this time, we discuss the progress of our staff, any concerns we have with the site or members of the staff, the statuses of our badges, and any other vital agenda task items.
Every other week, we meet with the whole Editorial Board, which includes our section editors, our social media manager, our Editors-in-Chief, and our dear adviser.
I’ve always said that journalism, as a class, is a disguise for real-life — journalism prepares us all by having deadlines we must meet, being able to communicate effectively, and being able to give and receive feedback and criticism. It’s important to me that we give our writers the independence and room for self-accountability to be prepared for the real world. However, we are always there for each of our writers and editors; they are never alone as long as they are a part of the Pathfinder team.