Leadership and Team Building

My role as Editor-in-Chief

Create, finalize and assign all articles per monthly cycle
Draft, design and upload the final version of all articles published online
Directly oversee two managing editors and organize coverage with the rest of the strategic team (my co-editor-in-chief and all four managing editors)
Work with an over 100 person staff of reporters, photographers, and editors to ensure a smooth production cycle
Serve as a mentor and example for reporters and younger staff members
Represent the publication within the school and in public

Creating the News Cycle

After the pitches are sent in (see Reporting for more detail on the process), I sent out the “cycle assignments” email to notify the staff of the official start of the new news cycle. In these monthly emails, I include the spreadsheet of all the assignments (see below for an example), along with the various guides to news writing, sourcing, multimedia and more in order to provide our staff with all the necessary resources to do the best they can on their assignment.

This is the cycle calendar that our staff follows. On the Friday of the first week, assignments are sent out. Week 1 (W1) articles are due a week later on Friday, and Week 2 (W2) are due the Friday after. The last week is dedicated to catching up on any unpublished articles and sending out the pitch form for the next cycle production. I’ve also implemented article check-ins and when editing should begin for each week.

This is the first page of the cycle assignments spreadsheet that we send out, separating the reporters into four teams under our four managing editors and implementing the deadlines for W1 and W2 articles.

In each cycle spreadsheet, I work with my strategic team to fill out the spreadsheet, which we designed and perfected over the summer. We carefully fill out the necessary visuals and add any additional notes that we think may be helpful for the assignment. I assign which managing editor oversees which article assignment, and I am in charge of reviewing the entire spreadsheet before sending it out to the staff.

Along the way, to track the assignment progress, I check off when the interviews, writing, editing, and publishing occur and highlight the row green when the article goes up on the site. Though filled with numerous steps and details, these checkpoints and columns have proven incredibly helpful in managing the efficiency and progress of articles, helping us manage up to 50 articles per monthly assignment and publishing the most number of stories ever this year since the inception of our news site.

A “no ghosting” stickers on my laptop, a gift my adviser gave to everyone on staff.

Communication

One of the most important facets of Harker Journalism is communication. In fact, we like to emphasize a “no ghosting” policy, a running joke and staff motto that our adviser gifted to us in the form of a fun sticker (see image on the right).

Making Strategic Accessible

In the video to the right, I, alongside the rest of the strategic team, create a video to introduce ourselves to the staff, mainly the new reporters and the freshmen cubs. I introduced the idea of creating a “get to know us” video in order to foster communication, especially since our staff size increased by over 100% this year.

As strattegic leadership, we want to show that we’re also normal seniors who are most definitely approachable people. By reaching out to the staff first through a comedic video, we hoped that the rest of our much larger staff would feel comfortable reaching out back to us whenever they needed anything.

Communication Between Strategic

EIC meetings with advisers: Every Monday, my co-editor-in-chief and I meet with our two advisers, as shown by the photo to the right. My co-editor-in-chief and I often brainstormed ways to increase communication between the staff.

Our biggest recent project that took up a majority of our EIC meetings was the site redesign process, in which we renovated our site from the way it looked since its inception to a completely modernized look. For more detail, please visit Design.

Strategic meetings: Every Tuesday, my co-editor-chief and I meet with our four managing editors for a strategic meeting. As an editor-in-chief, I’ve also realized the importance of constant communication between the strategic team. Our internal organization and communication as the leaders of the publication and the staff trickle down throughout the rest of the staff. Therefore, this year, I instituted weekly 30-minute to one-hour-long strategic meetings so that each of the four managing editors, my-co-editor-in-chief and I could review the progress for each assignment of that week (either a Week 1 or Week 2 article). To see the production cycle, please click here.

During our meetings, we list out and separate each of the articles for that week into three categories: "edited,” “finished draft” or “incomplete” on the large whiteboard in the back of the journalism room. This helps to create a visual understanding of which articles need more support and which articles are ready to publish for the day/week. Furthermore, after a year of online, our weekly in-person meetings have helped to curb the isolation of online meetings, helping our strategic team grow closer in friendship and goal alignments as as a cohesive unit. The video on the right shows one of our strategic meetings.

Communication Between the Staff

In order to increase communication between all staff members, I worked with my co-editor-in-chief and the editors of our print publication to create an online-specific channel so that our primary “official” communication platform wasn’t just limited to the leadership staff, and reporters and editors could freely converse, ask questions or pitch ideas in a more efficient, inclusive and open manner.

As shown in the screenshot of our Slack communication platform to the right, the “aquila-home” channel provides a much faster and more transparent communication method that is so inherently necessary for an online news site, where information needed at a moment’s notice can be quickly passed along.

Here, one of our managing editors “Irene Yuan,” reporter “Olivia Xu” and our news editor “Isha Moorjani” can all communicate to the staff at the same level without leadership stratification or confusion. By creating this channel, article progress and transparency between the staff increases, spurring our efficiency and closeness.

Staff Bonding

Staff Kudos

This year, I was responsible for introducing a new platform of bonding the staff. Building off an effort of increasing transparency and openness between the staff, I created the “kudos” channel in Slack where my co-editor-in-chief and I would notify the entire staff when an article was published, making sure to include not just the writers, but the photographers and reporters that contributed to make the story complete.

In each kudos, we point out some of the most impressive points of progress for that article, whether it was a stunning visual, a fast turnaround time for completion, consistent communication or diverse sourcing. Not only do our individual kudos’ serve as a way to congratulate the hard-earned work of our staff, but the specific reasons of praise listed in each kudos serve as explicit examples of what the rest of the staff should mimic in their own future articles.

Furthermore, in return, staff members have the opportunity to react to the message with a variety of fun emojis of their choice as a way to support their fellow reporters and editors. The kudos channel has been wildly popular with the staff and functions as an integral area of bonding, where everyone on staff comes together to cheer each other on as we report and do what we love as journalists.

This is a kudos to a reporter, where I point out how he got the article in in less than 24 hours as an example of how news should be timely to stay relevant.

Here is a kudos I gave to our Arts & Entertainment editor, but I also make sure to include everyone else that contributed.

Editor’s Week

1. Organizing: One of my favorite traditions each year is Editor’s Week, where the returning leadership staff gathers on campus for one week prior to the first week of school in order to plan the first production cycle of the year, get back into the groove of operating cohesively as a staff and individually as journalists and prepare for matriculation coverage—the most important event of the beginning of the school year.

Together with my co-editor-in-chief, the editors of our print publication, The Winged Post, and the editors of our yearbook, TALON, we created a day-by-day schedule for the week, holding editorial meetings, introducing the online guides that I spent hours creating with our online strategic team or teaching photography and videography to the staff.

Click here for the full Editor’s Week schedule I created with the editors of our various publications

This is a screenshot of the schedule for the Tuesday of Editor’s Week, methodically created the week before by myself and the other editors of our various publications.

2. Bonding over Traditions: To me, what makes Editor’s Week so special is the staff bonding that takes place. In the past years, I’ve attended Editor’s Week as a reporter learning from my older editors’ experience and leadership. With our Editors’ Week being cancelled my junior year as the Arts & Entertainment Editor, I strived to make it as nurturing and exciting of a first week back for our new leadership team. I made sure to implement moments when our leadership team could play games and have fun together (see video below to the left). As the “parent” of the “leadership family,” I always have the best fun shopping for new snacks to introduce to the staff, and I made sure we were well equipped for the week (see video below to the right).

These are scenarios that my co-editor-in-chief and I came up with to present to the staff during our discussions.

3. Practicing journalism: Alongside the fun and games, I worked with the editors to hold demo lessons for videography and photography in an effort to have our entire staff take advantage of the extra time during Editor’s Week to become as comfortable as possible with all our camera gear—part of a larger initiative of my role in instituting more multimedia content online this year. We also reviewed various codes of ethics and held discussions on what we would do in various ethically challenging situations, as seen in the screenshot to the right.

For more, see Commitment to Diversity.

Aquila All-Star Awards

Our newest tradition: Another way to increase staff bonding was implementing the “Aquila All-Star Awards,” a video that commended reporters and section editors for their stellar work for each cycle. These celebratory and light-hearted videos, shown to the staff at the end of each cycle, are yet another way to increase staff cohesivity and make the new reporters feel like they belong in the journalism family. During our strategic meetings, I led the team into narrowing the award categories into…

most responsive reporter
best photo/multimedia
best sourcing
cycle MVP
best lede
editors’ pick
quickest turnaround
best section

Filmed by Alysa Suleiman, Nicole Tian, Irene Yuan, Arely Sun, Vishnu Kannan and Lucy Ge; edited by Arely Sun

Arts and Entertainment

Spearheading a new section

Transitioning to an editor: During the leadership application season before my junior year, I had decided to apply as sports editor to continue my passion and desire to expand visual sports coverage online—after spending a year as a sports reporter and pushing for consistent photo coverage and multimedia for sports games. Yet, my adviser proposed a new role: Arts & Entertainment editor. I would pioneer the section, which hadn’t existed in previous years—online or in print. At first, the role seemed daunting and completely left-field, and I wasn’t sure if I would be ready for such a large leadership role, but with the support of my then editors-in-chief and managing editors, I began to learn how to edit and how to generate and help assign consistent content for a section (for more on editing, please see here).

Preparing for the role: After accepting the A&E Editor position, I began to prepare myself as best I could over the summer. I researched online trends, delved into the artistry of the entertainment world, and familiarized myself with the conservatory department at my school. Eventually I came up with a brainstorm list, which I presented to my editor-in-chief. I wanted to set good habits early on and demonstrate to my leaders and to myself the effort and dedication I placed into performing my responsibilities as best I could. To the right is a screenshot of a brief list of ideas I added to over the summer during my research.

Growth: One of the leadership moments of growth that I look back on most fondly was an article featuring a Broadway actor who found popularity on TikTok. Looking for ways to expand the entertainment section of Aquila through popular social media platforms like TikTok, I reached out to Broadway actor JJ Niemann on Instagram (for more, please see Web and Social Media) for an interview to understand how Broadway actors had adjusted to the pandemic.

Yet, I also realized that I couldn’t be the only one writing for my section—I needed to integrate more reporters in order to better marry the staff and my section. After the interview, I coached a sophomore reporter through the process of writing a feature profile, resulting in a moving article that later won a Best of Student News Online award. Though I was only “additional reporting” for this story, I’m thankful that I shared this opportunity with a younger returning staff member as it led to a blossoming work relationship and sparked her interest in the A&E section and becoming the section editor this year.

Read the full article here.

A screenshot of my brainstorming over the summer. I actively reached out to my then editor-in-chief to flesh out a plan for each of the ideas

The article where I interviewed Broadway performer JJ Niemann after seeing his popularity and comedic viral videos on TikTok. I reached out to him via Instagram, but later gave the recording to a sophomore reporter and coached her through the process of writing a feature profile.

Giving performing arts their stage back: My biggest priority as the new A&E editor was to create comprehensive coverage of our upper school’s over 180+ people conservatory (out of a school of under 800 students), a daunting task especially during the pandemic as we were adjusting to reporting virtually during online learning. However, I made sure that each performing arts department, performing virtually during the fall to winter season or in-person but socially distanced in the spring, received the coverage they deserved, whether that was Dance Production (shown below), the Fall Play, the Spring Musical, or vocal and instrumental concerts.

A screenshot of the photographer rotation schedule I created for the Dance Production week to ensure that each dance routine in the show received adequately coverage.

A screenshot of the email I sent to the dance production director at our upper school.

A screenshot of the email response I received, which provided important info such as what protocols to follow.

Tracking section progress: Towards the end of second semester, I wanted to find a way to document the progress of this brand-new section as well as have an anchor of ideas to return to and add to. Many of these ideas I later brought to fruition as I began to take on more responsibilities of helping my editors decide who to assign them to.

Music Mondays

Since October 2020, Aquila has released a specifically themed playlist of seven songs each Monday, with each song corresponding to one day of the week. Ranging from school topics to politics and national news, the intention was to provide a sense of connection within the community and an interactive and enjoyable element to the site. Especially when we hear positive feedback from the community, it puts a smile on my face knowing that these song curations, which have expanded to being written by multiple people on staff, provide some sort of entertainment for others.

Book Corner

Book Corner is an all-staff project and repeater that I initiated in my Arts and Entertainment section last year, where every member on staff chose one non-fiction book and wrote a review on it. I realized that we needed more literary content such as reviews in the A&E section, and providing book reviews would be the perfect content during the pandemic when people had more time on their hands at home and could pick up a book or two by reading the reviews on our site.

Working closely with my adviser, one of our upper school librarians Ms. Pelman, and my then editors, I introduced literary content to the A&E section, not just media entertainment. Book Corner allowed the staff to expand intellectually while simultaneously providing our community with reading inspiration and consistent A&E content.

I then compiled and edited a video (on the right) to introduce the repeater.

See the images below for the Book Corner project kickoff (left) and the archive of Book Corner reviews (right).

Commitment to Diversity