This past week, the JagWire‘s fifth issue was distributed to the school. This issue required a lot more hands-on work from editors in order to solve problems we have been having in past issues. We’re now also looking forward to the sixth issue, one of our last issues before the senior issue.

Sarah speaking:

First of all, I can’t believe this is week 22. This year has been fantastic so far and has gone by so quickly. I have loved seeing our staff continue to improve. This last issue, Jill made a point to meet with every page designer more closely to try and challenge our staff. Dedication like that has only improved the paper as the year has gone on. We are still learning and correcting (several spelling mistakes were printed this issue), however, I believe the paper has progressed for the better. We have also been trying to improve the website this semester. As we have talked about before, the website has more video content than ever before. I am excited to work on issue six and challenge our staff even more.

Jill speaking:

I loved seeing designers take risks in issue five (ehem, Hannah and her Fantasy football page). The editors were much more involved with the pages in their section and I really like some of the changes we made, like covering the entire map page with a road map. I’m also really excited for issue six since we have decided to do a special feature that will cover four pages instead of the usual two that we have for the double page. I think it will be really fun to work on, and I also believe the students will be really interested in reading it. I’m glad we are trying new things in these last few issues because this is the senior’s last chance to try this stuff, and it’s also a good learning experience in taking risks for the students next year. We’ve never done anything as a special feature before and it will be fun to pave the way on that front.

Lesson of the week:

1. It is OK to take risks with our paper; there is no rule against trying new things.

Lesson 22 of being an editor-in-chief: Check.