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Reporting and Writing
As a photo staffer my sophomore year and Photo Editor my junior year, I would typically work aside a writer and instead take the photos for the stories. Slowly I started branching out into taking on more writing during my junior year.
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Now, as Editor-in-Chief, my responsibility has changed from mainly creating content to having to decide content for print and the website and editing drafts. At the beginning of each issue my co-Editor-in-Chief and I lead a class brainstorm where each team and section has a poster board where they write down ideas. They section the paper up into all our different sections (news, arts, opinion, culture, etc.) and then they present them to the class. I then write down the ideas on a document alongside the Managing Editors in my class. I go through the list with my co-Editor-in-Chief and Print Managing Editor. We aim to ensure that the content is engaging and has a really story behind it. When it comes to website content we go through a similar process, but rather than reviewing the ideas with our publication's Print Managing Editor we review it with our Web Managing Editor.
Since I joined the staff I had been wanting to write a food review for the longest time, but wasn't really able to since i had to focus on my photography responsibilities. Our school has "The Square" right next door, a place where students go in the morning, during lunch, and after school. When our staff finally decided to cover it, I volunteered to take photos and write the story. An important aspect of review writing was letting my voice come through, so I made sure to write notes of my exact feelings eating the foods in the moment and details so I would remember when writing the article.
As Photo Editor my junior year, I decided to start a quarter in review photo gallery that would contain a variety of events from the quarter. My goal was to be straight to the point with a lead and short nut graph and then compile photos that my staff including myself had taken and represented that quarter best.
An important part of our issues is the letter from the editors as it is typically one of the first things a viewer may see or read. We try to connect them to something in the issue or something relating to where we are time wise in that year. For instance in our first letter my co-EIC and I discussed all of the traditions we have on The Muse. We took our photo in the photo studio as the letter discussed how we finally got our own photo studio and how it would allow us with more opportunities. Throughout the issue, many of the photos are taken in the studio showcasing how often we use it. In our second letter we discussed how we always go to The Square during our free period and to tie it all together we took our photo in The Square. We aimed our letter towards this location since the cover story was all about the reconstruction in the square. This is a very important location to students as seniors eat lunch there or find themselves there both in the morning and after school. Our goal was to engage our audience with what we hope to accomplish throughout each issue.