Last year, Homecoming and the ensuing madness was a highly covered topic of the newspaper. It was talked about in almost every issue in some way. To us, it felt like the topic that the school was talking the most about, and that we should mirror that viewpoint with our coverage of it. While collectively we didn’t feel that our coverage was too excessive, we did hear some complaints that we were talking about it way too much and that the dance controversy didn’t warrant all that attention. Going into this year, we decided to tread lightly on our coverage of Homecoming, very nearly not putting anything about it in the second issue. However, we realized quickly that it was a mistake to only post photos and stories about Homecoming on the web. Homecoming is a new, huge event every year and the way we cover it this year shouldn’t necessarily be affected entirely by the way we covered it last year.

Sarah speaking:

 Journalism can be difficult to balance sometimes because there will always be readers who are excluded from your coverage. Last year, many people felt our coverage of Homecoming was over the top. For a newspaper, especially when writing a staff editorial, however, it is necessary to find a topic that with the help of the newspaper’s voice, can be affected or changed in some way. While some have said our coverage was too much, I can’t think of any other topic that could be better influenced by a powerful staff voice. I would rather hear complaints about a topic that I do think a majority of readers care about than a topic that means nothing to readers and so generates no student response.

Jill speaking:

I do agree that last year’s dance received a lot of press time in the newspaper but not without good reason, and not in bad taste. The dance was the most highly debated topic in the school last year, so why wouldn’t it be in our newspaper as well? While I was on board with not talking about it much in the paper this issue, I quickly realized my mistake. Regardless of reading about it all the time last year, kids this year aren’t worried about how much we covered the dances last year, they want to know how the dance went this time around.  Homecoming this year had plenty of changes to focus on and kids’ opinions on those changes deserved a voice.  It was also exciting to cover Homecoming week and the dance on the web because the web gives us much more freedom than we had in prior years. Running around with our photographer Jack during seminar and pulling people out of class to take party pictures of them in their tie dye, anyone? Like I said, plenty of things to cover and no legitimate reason not to cover them.

Lesson of the week:

1. Don’t let last years problems affect the way we cover what is newsworthy right now.

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