Writing for Publication, otherwise known as Journalism, is an elective where students write for the school newspaper, The Spectator. Every year, we publish eight issues, five of those being printed (physical copies) and the rest being online (found on berkleyspectator.com). Over the course of the year, we will end up writing over fifteen articles about various topics. In order to produceThe Spectator everyone knows and loves, the journalists on staff have a specific process that we follow to make sure our news outlet is the best that it can be.
The year starts out with our editors-in-chief (the highest ranked editor positions that go to two students) teaching new and returning staff members about our writing process. We learn about the six sections of the paper: news—where we write about local current events, features—where we write about significant people or things, opinion, sports, entertainment, and student life—where we write about things going on in Berkley high school. Our advisor, Mr. Giarmo, also will give lessons on new writing skills like writing leads, conclusions, and outlines. Then, we start writing.
Well, not really. Before we can start writing out articles, we have a brainstorming session. This is where writers express their article ideas to Mr. Giarmo and the editors-in-chief. Someone will explain their idea, and it will either be approved or adjusted, so it works better. For example, if someone wanted to write about an environmental issue, the editors-in-chief may help them localize the topic to make it revolve more around Berkley. Writers are supposed to come to the brainstorm with two or three ideas for articles, but sometimes it can be challenging to do this. But, that is okay, because while other people are sharing their ideas, something may come to mind. Also, sometimes people will have three ideas but only be able to write about two, so they can pass their third one onto someone else with only one idea. An important thing about The Spectator is to keep things local. We make sure to write about events in Berkley like sports events, musicals, or dances, because those things aren’t covered by any other news source.
Once everyone has one or two articles, depending on the issue, we start writing. This process starts with an outline where writers will meet with Mr. Giarmo if necessary to work out the details of what will be included. An example of this is if you are writing a movie review, you may outline the points of the movie you want to discuss. Then we get to writing. The nice thing about writing articles for The Spectator is that they can be about anything you want and there is no word limit like there is in your English classes. When you finish writing your article, it is sent to editors, starting with section editors, copy editors, managing editors, editors-in-chief and finally Mr. Giarmo. After five rounds of editing, your article is guaranteed to be ready for publication.
For an online issue, the process stops here and the articles are published on our website, but for a print issue this is not the case. Once articles are finished writing, we go to the computer lab where we start making pages. Each staff member gets assigned one or two pages to design. These pages can be super simple or super creative depending on the skills you have. We use Adobe Indesign to create these pages which is kind of like a combination of google slides and photoshop. Don’t worry if you have never used it before because you will learn and get better as you go. These pages also have to be looked over by two senior editors (managing editors and editors-in-chief) and Mr. Giarmo before it can be saved and sent to the printer.
After all of the pages are sent to the printer, we wait. The boxes of the newspapers are delivered to Berkley about three business days later and when they do, we distribute them! We distribute in the morning before 8:20 at almost every door at BHS (you may have seen us before). We also distribute during 4th hour, if we have enough copies left. We divide up the school and go in pairs door-to-door to see if anyone in the classrooms wants a copy.
After all of this, we can finally relax. Sometimes when we finish an issue we like to have a game day, where we play cards (very competitively). We often play Euchre which gets super intense and we even keep track of our winnings and whoever has the most points by the end of the year gets a prize. We also get some downtime while we are writing and editing articles. For example, after you submit your article to your first editor, it’s a perfect opportunity to get some homework done for other classes.
Writing for The Spectator is an amazing experience because you get to learn so many new writing and interviewing skills. For me, I have gotten better at not procrastinating because if I don’t make a deadline, the issue might not come out on time. We have also built an amazing community in class where we are friendly and supportive with each other and help come up with new and interesting ideas.
