Editing, Leadership & Team Building
Insight into my career as an editor over four years
01
Description of Editor Responsbilities
As the Overall Editor-in-Chief of Imua, a newly formed position, I have numerous responsibilities among myself, staffers, other editors, and the advisers. Some of my duties include guiding the editorial board on deadlines and content, making edits on student writing, assisting students in graphic design for print, and communicating with school leadership and our printer to ensure the successful distribution of our issues. Over my four years of being an editor, I have grown to love the camaraderie of the newsroom. Even when I am faced with difficult questions on sensitive topics by staffers, I seek out other editors and leaders to discuss. Our discussions range from the short to the lengthy and the peaceful to the energetic, but in the end, we, including the staffers, all have mutual respect for our beliefs and ideas. This, in part, is what generates the vastly diverse pitches we get each cycle. I, in turn, respond with excitement and curiosity. How can we accurately and ethically incorporate a new idea or perspective?
02
Activities to Learn Newsroom Tools & Procedures
As an editor for the past four years, I have run many workshops and activities at the beginning of each year to get everyone oriented with the way Imua operates. After all, we need everyone to be on the same page to be effective. The slide at right shows how I integrated essential information we need for our website (staff bios) and the skills students need to build to be able to use our online newsroom management software, SNO Flow. Such integrations make my activities very useful and time-effective.
03
Adobe Creative Cloud Skills Building
To create digital graphics and design our print issues, we use the Adobe Creative Suite. Learning the array of programs in the suite is often daunting at first, especially given the number of tools and capabilities the programs have. Thus, we run design workshops and tutorials which culminate in student projects. One of them was a logo design for your name (shown at left). When sharing my design, I explained to everyone how I used the project as an opportunity to practice creating gradients from randomized color palettes. I encourage everyone to step out of their comfort zone in the realm of design to develop their skills.
04
Utilizing New Technology
After an editor once discussed using Otter AI to record interviews, I have become a diligent user of the app’s capabilities to transcribe interviews. Additionally, I strongly encourage staffers to use it as we can have more productive conversations with a basic transcript of the interview already generated. I do, though, explain that it is critical to read the transcript to make sure to spell names and places accurately. In the end, this AI technology is valuable, but I emphasize that we need to be informed and ethical users of the technology.
05
Maintaining A Standard
Part of team building in the journalistic world is adhering to a common standard. Our newsroom follows AP Style* with a few in-house exceptions for the better of our readership. These exceptions include using courtesy titles and not using italics for words of different languages. The latter is especially significant considering the number of Hawaiian words used in our publication. Even though it is easy to neglect these details, I stress the importance of staying consistent. When we do, it is clear to our readership that we are a team even in the smallest details of our work.
*View my AP style presentation here.
06
Suggesting Ideas
While many staffers come up with pitches that they are eager to pursue, some struggle at times with generating feasible ideas. Thus, they ask for feedback from me. I converse with them, with the ultimate goal of giving a suggestion they might be passionate about. Other times, I communicate my ideas with the editorial board and we as a whole connect ideas to students. What is especially rewarding to see is when we give someone an idea and they change the angle of the idea in a way that is more enticing for the reader.
07
Identifying Areas of Improvement
As we work through our different production cycles, I am always at work behind the scenes identifying areas of improvement. I want our team to work as smoothly as possible across the different levels of editors and up to the advisers. Often, we run into issues where too many excited editors give too many conflicting edits which bewilder staffers. Other times we simply miss important details until it is too late. Thus, I have emphasized the importance of reflection in our editor meetings. If we can identify areas for improvement, we can act on them. If we sit quietly and continue the same way, we will not be as successful together.
08
Meeting with Experts
Sometimes even we, the editorial board, recognize we need to seek outside support. This year, we met with our school’s Communications Department to get feedback on our social media content and posting schedule. Social media has revolutionized the way messages spread across communities, and we want to make sure we are part of that revolution—in a timely, accurate, and sensitive fashion. One important lesson I gathered from the meeting was that we should not design our social media presence just to garner likes—the likes will come as people become more appreciative of our content. Eventually, I hope we can incorporate more takeovers, as I’ve identified that those can be a more first-person-like experience for the audience, rather than the typical birds-eye view that social media presents.
09
Supporting New Media Forms
I am constantly eager to integrate new ways of sharing our stories. I was particularly excited this year when a student proposed the idea of adding an Imua podcast to our website. They suggested a hosting platform, and I immediately acted by activating an account and linking it to our website. The final product was fascinating—to see a podcast on our website. On the other side of things, it was a unique experience “editing” a podcast. Not that I was mixing the audio and sound effects, but providing feedback on the content and quotes included. Reflecting on this, I realized that being a leader in journalism means adapting traditional skills to new platforms.
10
Creating Checklists
Sometimes we all just need a checklist. When staffers respond to me with confusion and uncertainty, I sometimes respond by creating an easy-to-understand checklist. I bold what is especially important to the success of their work getting published. This is yet another measure that keeps our team together and minimizes time delays from when a piece is done to when it is posted. Lastly, I sign off the checklist with pictures of the editors to reach out to for any help. Even a static document should emit expression.
