As Montgomery County students continue virtual learning this school year, journalism classes and school newspapers continue to provide news coverage to students and are working towards overcoming the challenges of operating in a virtual space.
School newspapers have changed their new writer recruitment and training programs, as well as their communication methods and publishing schedules. Online papers are facing routine technology issues, while print newspapers are adapting to an entirely online paper format.
In some high schools, such as James Hubert Blake High School, newspaper staff must be enrolled in Journalism as an elective to contribute to the paper. Normally, new writers learn the history and basics of journalism, while editors brainstorm, revise, and publish articles to a website or work on the layout for monthly print issues during class.
Additionally, during a normal school year, new writers for The Blake Beat shadow an editor or returning staff writer as they are sent out on a writing assignment. James Hubert Blake senior and The Blake Beat editor-in-chief Olivia Gyapong recalls working with her editor to revise parts of her articles until she was experienced enough to to write complete articles on her own.
However, this year, new writers are receiving training from their Journalism advisor during virtual classes and do not have the option to observe an older staff member.
“We’re not all in the same Zoom room,” Gypong said. “All of the returnees and editors are in a breakout room working on articles and publishing on the website, [while] in the other Zoom room all of the first-time writers are working with their teacher to learn how to write like a journalist.”
Gyapong added that there are only six returning staff members on The Blake Beat this year, due to staff who have graduated, not for a lack of student interest or recruitment. Her Journalism class has about 30 students, the majority of which are new writers.
“My teacher … also teaches … honors English 9 and he’s usually good at identifying strong candidates for journalism,” Gyapong said. “He will handpick students from his English 9 classes and basically pitch them to join the newspaper.”
However, Richard Montgomery High School’s student newspaper The Tide has turned to other methods of recruitment because students are not required to enroll in journalism to contribute to the paper.
“Since we don’t have the in-person club fair, we don’t have as many opportunities for recruitment. We’re really depending on the virtual club fair this year, [and] at the same time we’ve resorted to sending out a mass email … to the entire school,” Richard Montgomery sophomore and The Tide news editor Rachel Wang said. “We’re going to be more dependent on word-of-mouth and social media [this year] as well.”
Communication methods between editors and writers have remained largely unchanged. Outside of regularly scheduled meetings and in-school Journalism periods, editors and writers usually communicate through email or text to assign articles and use Google Docs to make revisions.
Sherwood High School’s The Warrior uses an editorial calendar to determine which newspaper sections have article availabilities and when those articles will be published on their website. The calendar is accessible to staff writers, editors and their journalism advisor.
“Our teacher [will] assign … articles to some people but there’ll also be some free spaces, so when I see a free space, I put my name down, and I put my idea for the article,” Sherwood junior and sports staff writer Matthew Rosenthal said. “Then [my teacher will] assign an editor and a due date and a word count.”
The Tide has implemented a similar calendar system for publishing articles, while maintaining their current system for assigning articles through email.
“We don’t have print issues anymore so we don’t have the entire layout process so we’re… keeping up a routine weekly posting schedule for each section. Mondays are for news, Tuesdays are for features,Wednesdays for opinions and etcetera,” Wang said.
Although some newspapers, such as The Tide, have faced challenges transitioning from being a monthly print publication to an online-only publication, online-only publications are experiencing normal technology issues that are compounded by a lack of communication and slow email response.
A couple weeks ago, The Blake Beat’s website experienced a crash and article permalinks malfunctioned. When a reader clicked on an article, they were taken to a 404 error page.
“I don’t think that’s a challenge that would necessarily go away … by just being back in school so … I tried reaching out to our school’s [tech support]. I actually got an automated message saying that all tech support was being centralized,” Gyapong said. “They eventually got back to us … but I feel like [they] would’ve been able to help us more had we been back in the building.”
Staff members’ communication struggles extend beyond contacting technology support. Gyapong, Rosenthal and Wang all mentioned that they were struggling with the delays of virtual communication between writers and fostering a sense of community in a virtual space.
“You don’t have that in-person interaction that you can usually have at like whole person club meetings,” Wang said. “We’ll definitely be trying to boost interactivity through virtual club meetings and also consistent email correspondences.”
Article by Avery Wang of Richard Montgomery High School
Graphic by Charles Wang of Walter Johnson High School