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Reporting for work
The school newspaper is a natural breeding ground for good work habits. Master them, and you’ll have definite skills to add to your resume. Here are five skills you’ll learn while working on your school paper.
1. How to dig for answers Say your article concerns a local daycare center that burned down over the weekend. You might drive by the scene or ask nearby shopkeepers about the owner. You need her phone number. The other shopkeepers want to help, but no one knows the daycare owner’s last name.
But you don’t let the opportunity for sources go to waste. Be sure to get comments from the other business owners before you leave. Then, look up the daycare on the Internet. If the center does not have a Web site, don’t get discouraged. Many businesses are members of a chamber of commerce. Your search will most likely yield the owner’s name. Go to your trusty phonebook and make the call. The research skills you’ll cultivate at the school newspaper will equip you for writing thorough reports at work. You’ll be known as somebody who can handle the details and get them right.
2. How to meet deadlines You’ve had deadlines for years with homework, special projects and other dated assignments. You’ll have plenty of deadlines in the newspaper business, too. Your school paper’s client base—the students, faculty and administration—expects to receive the next issue at a certain time.
You and the rest of the newsroom team, including writers, designers and layout people, made a promise to produce a publication that’s informative and relevant and published on a regular basis. Working ahead of time to make your deadlines can be hard to get used to. For example, you might start the end-of-year articles on the heels of the “welcome to a new school year” edition. But just because spring break or graduation topics seem far off, don’t be deceived. Early deadlines build in enough time for an issue to be printed and distributed on time. Still, as a student with other academic responsibilities, your deadlines will come up quickly no matter how early you prepare for them. It’s great practice for the world of work, where you will need to handle many projects with overlapping deadlines.
3. How to cooperate Nothing teaches cooperation like running a newspaper. None of the different roles works in isolation because the publishing process is a series of steps that often depend upon one another. If you are the sports writer who is working on a wrestling piece and your school football team suddenly experiences a big upset, you might need to be two places at once.
With the spirit of cooperation, another writer could step in for you, enabling you to interview the emotionally bruised quarterback. In turn, be prepared to be called in to help out when the arts writer needs to cover the drama club’s presentation of “The Nutcracker Suite.” Prospective employers like to see that you can work well with others and solve challenges amicably.
4. How to balance arguments Sometimes you will write articles containing points of view you do not share. But as a journalist, you go get the story and talk to all sides without injecting your own opinion.
In a balanced article, students, teachers, administrators and even parents have their opinions voiced. Your job is to present all views and let the readers decide their opinions for themselves.
5. How to maintain credibility Nothing takes away your credibility like a messed-up quote. When using quotation marks, be sure you’re recording what was said word for word. You can leave out unnecessary rambling or repetitive statements, but be sure that by omitting them, you don’t change the quote’s meaning.
Also, verify what was said, and attribute it correctly. Recording words accurately will get you a reputation for being reliable and a good listener.
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