Installment+15

South of Denver

Chapter 15 - March 6, 2005

The good news was that issue three of the paper "looked pretty." Lindsey, a new staff member, said that this newspaper thing was more exciting than she planned on. David, who had produced three excellent graphics at the last minute to save the day for three different page managers, said, "It looks great and people are loving it. Now we need to work on what's inside." It was also his first time seeing his work in the paper.

Everyone on the staff was enjoying the glow that comes from actually seeing all that hard work in print. Many remarked on how many students they had seen actually reading the paper!

But working on "what's inside." Yes. That is the challenge, isn't it?

During our debriefing two days after the paper hit the halls, we talked about the front page. Everyone loved the color, the huge honkin' art, and the sidebar with the results of our survey on iPods.

But then I reminded everyone of one of the very first things I had taught them. It's based on the Ernie Pyle saying, "If you want to tell the story of a war, tell the story of one soldier."

My version is "If you want to tell the story of a high school, tell the story of one student."

"And if you want to tell the story of iPods at Rock Canyon?" I asked.

"Tell the story of one kid with an iPod?"

"Tell the story of one iPod?"

"Forget the story and just plug into an iPod?"

Funny kids.

The ugly truth about our page one story is that Susie and Chelsea, who had combined on the concept, the surveying and the writing of the lead story, had agreed weeks ago that there was no actual "story" here. This coverage would best be presented in smaller bits of information. They had talked about quote collections, of course. But they had also brainstormed a timeline of portable music players, and discussed cool ways to present the survey results.

But when the deadline crunch arrived, these two talented young women ended up with a huge piece of art, surrounded by a 20-inch piece of text and a simple sidebar listing some results of the survey.

"The truth of the matter," I said, "is that writing a long piece of text is much easier than presenting information in more creative, accessible ways. Coming up with cool alternatives to text is hard work."

Even talented journalists faced with a looming deadline revert to habit, and to the easy solution. The challenge, I noted, was for us all to learn some new habits, some new ways to visualize a newspaper.

When we dug into the text itself, we discovered something else. It wasn't very good.

The lead sentence was general, and grammatically suspect. "iPods have become the new trend at RCHS." we began. You know you are in trouble when your lead sentence ends up being what was written on the white board during story brainstorming.

In the second sentence, we wrote that iPods came as gifts for many of our students, in 6' by 6' boxes! We had been in such a rush that we failed to follow our own style guide, and had typed 6' instead of six inches, and no one had caught it.

We had a good laugh as someone visualized a kid staggering around on Christmas morning with a 6x6 box of "portable music."

I pointed out that only four people had been quoted in the piece, and the quotes were all of the "hit and run" variety. Each source got a graf, and two sentences total, if that. One source said, "[the iPod] helps me relax and take tests."

What do we want to know?

"How does it help her relax and take tests?" said Gillian.

Precisely. We never got into that. We just moved on to the next quote, from a teacher who said she thought iPods may damage the hearing of teenagers. Did the teacher have any evidence at all that this might be the case? Should we have followed up on that?

Everyone agreed that we should have.

"So why didn't we?" I asked.

How we answer that question will determine whether our last two issues of this first year will be provocative, fun and educational, or if they will end up the equivalent of a freshman PowerPoint presentation on Greek mythology: pretty but empty.

Jack Kennedy

Rock Canyon High School

Highlands Ranch CO 80124

jkkennedy@comcast.net

jack.kennedy@dcsdk12.org

Note: This is part of a series of columns on working with a completely untrained staff. It is cryptotherapy for me. It may occasionally provide something positive for you. It's all uncharted territory, that's for sure.