Leadership & Team Building
Introduction
More than anything else, Ladue Publications has taught me how to be an effective leader. I used to think it was simply delegation and management, ensuring that all staff members were always on time. But it's so much more than that. Leadership is communication, trust and respect. It's late-night calls with struggling staff members and meetings with my editorial board to discuss how we can educate and aid both our staff and the student body. As executive editor in chief, I've learned how to celebrate and honor my staff members so room 1311 is a community that they enjoy being part of.
Recognitions: Sixth Place Editorial Leadership, NSPA (2024); Leadership Award in Student Journalism, NSPA (2024)
Editorial Calendar
To understand how Ladue Publications operates, it's imperative to look at our editorial calendar. At the beginning of this school year, I worked with my editorial board to create a schedule of issue release dates. We determined that there would be nine Panorama Newsmagazines, two ID Magazines, one Melodrama Literary Magazine and near-daily posts on the website and social media. We also laid out our production cycle. Ladue Publications produces content in four-week increments — during this time, we have class during the school day on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
First, there's Content Collection Week, in which staff members gather information and interviews. Next is Copy Week, where stories are finalized and design discussions commence. Third comes Production Week: when the entire staff stays after school every day of the week to finalize the issue. Finally, we have Recovery Week — a time to reflect, relax and story pitch.
This year, I expanded beyond the four-week structure and gave staff members a list of assignments for each class day. These checkpoints streamlined our content, making it easier to identify struggling staff members and provide support as needed. See below for an outline of this calendar.
Leading Staff Members
Running Class
To foster a collaborative newsroom, I strive to understand each student individually. Alongside the other EICs, I begin class by highlighting team member, calling upon individuals to share their weekend plans through our traditional "Monday Stories." Or, if it's a Wednesday, we'll run through "One-minute Interviews:" a fun, rapid-fire way to get to know every staff member. Thursdays bring "Thursday Fun" — a game, like "find a friend" or Pictionary that gets us moving. I then check in with as many students as possible — asking about Ira’s successful interview, Lathan’s issue with contacting a photographer and Josh’s award in website design. At the end, I gather everyone and update the staff on reminders and upcoming deadlines, thanking each for their individual work.
Teaching Lessons
As a scholastic publication, my main goal is to educate students on improving their journalistic skills. So, I personally create — or delegate out — routine lessons to teach to new staff members. Each lesson I personally lead has two aspects: a presentation and an exercise. The combination ensures that staff members feel confident when translating skills into action, as many journalists must do on a daily basis. Below is an example of a lesson I've led.
Awards & Thank You's
To celebrate our staff members' work, each month, the Ladue Publications editorial board creates an Awards presentation. These are often goofy and laid-back — a break from the rigor our class usually requires and a chance to reflect on the past production cycle.
To take the celebration a step further, this year, I've made it a point to send thank-you messages after each issue is sent off. No matter how large or small a staff member's role was, they deserve recognition for going through the process and creating a truly exceptional product.
Seasonal Celebrations
In the vein of celebrating hard work, Ladue Publications holds seasonal traditions that keep our community feeling like a family rather than a workplace. See far left for a photo of the staff dressing up for Halloween at our monthly Worknight, and see left for a snapshot into our annual Valentine's Day exchange.
Leading Editors
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of my job is leading editors — something that requires a much different skillset than anything I've ever done. When communicating with editors, I constantly emphasize delegation and responsibility to improve their managerial skills.
Editor Lunches & Responsibilities
My biggest priority in regards to editors is communication. I want to make sure that each editor knows exactly what I expect of them, so there are no surprises when a page inevitably falls through or an interview gets unexpectedly rescheduled. So, I added individual section editor responsibilities into our staff manual to keep the lines of communication clear. I also included day-by-day editor responsibilities in our monthly ladder, where we lay out stories, so that they are easy to locate. In the same vein, I ensure that I'm constantly available for support. This year, I've done so through weekly editors' lunches — a time to discuss the production process and rectify those issues as necessary.
Copy Round Tables
Part of being the executive editor in chief means teaching editors how to be better editors themselves. In the past, our stories have been primarily edited by the copy editor in chief with the editor passively looking on. In an effort to increase the editor's role in this process, I implemented copy round tables. On the day that stories are due (Monday of Copy Week), editors are responsible for printing their staffer's stories out and hand-editing it with their section, identifying areas of growth and working with their section to achieve them.
JEA/NSPA Conferences
In my junior year, along with 2023-24 ID EIC Rory Lustberg and adviser Sarah Kirksey, I led a presentation at the JEA/NSPA Spring 2024 convention on how to manage multiple publications with a large staff. The event drew about 30 first-time and seasoned editors, who were hoping to improve on their own editorial leadership. After the event, 26 individuals saved our presentation (see right) for future use.
First two photos by Vincent Hsiao.
Communication
Mission Statements
To ensure that the editorial staff has the same vision for Ladue Publications' editorial direction, I started my senior year by sitting down with the editors of each publication and refining (or adding) a mission statement. Now, each publication uses this statement as a guiding ideal to make decisions, so our issues appear cohesive and stay atop of modern journalistic standards.
Copy Style Guide
Most copy produced by Ladue Publications is standardized by AP style. But there are certain Ladue-specific phrases that differ based upon the reporter's style — an issue that was only exacerbated when 52 individuals attempted to work on five publications at the same time. To make sure that every piece of copy follows the same guidelines, I drafted up the "copy style guide" at the beginning of this year — a document that serves as a reference to editors and reporters alike.
Innovation
My job as executive editor in chief doesn't just mean managing monthly content. I'm always looking for ways to improve Ladue Publications, which then allows us to excel when reporting on our community.
Inspiration Search Activity
At the end of the 2024, I led my staff in an activity that searched for inspiration from professional news sites. By this point, many staff members had understood the basics of lede writing, photography and InDesign. It was time to look for ways in which we could push the barriers of what was possible. The activity asked each staff member contribute to the following slideshow, which we reference when producing content.
Critique
As I learned while talking to Elon University Lecturer in Multimedia Journalism Kelly Furnas, the only way to improve as a publication is to conduct an in-depth critique. By identifying moments of weakness, a news site can hope to correct and improve on them for the future.
At Ladue Publications, prior to my senior year, critique was often a second-hand thought — something that occurred only if the EICs remembered to do so. I standardized and streamlined the critique process, introducing the concept of critique within sections. Before "critique day," I had editors come to class with notes on their section. Then, they'd lead their staff members in discussion, identifying areas of improvement. This activity had two benefits: one, we were constantly innovating, and two, it put the onus upon editors to be at the forefront of Ladue Publications' new ideas, allowing them to be leaders in their individual sections.
Social Media Editor Position
Managing a constant social media presence is hard. It's something that I found out the hard way, when attempting to revamp our Instagram page during the 2023-24 school year, and it's something that I realized when observing the 2024-25 website editors in chief, who have been in charge of social media content. To make sure that no one person is inundated with the sheer amount of work that social media content necessitates, I created a Social Media Editor position this year. After posting an initial sign-up and conducting interviews with my advisers, I filled the position with two staff members. They've started working to create a new style guide and post schedule — aspects that will grow @ladue.publications tenfold.
School Board Reporting
When I entered the 2024-25 school year as the executive editor in chief, I noticed that Ladue Publications had no regular school board coverage. After reporting on a Francis Howell School Board meeting over the summer, I knew that we needed to grow this aspect of our reporting if we wanted to be the news outlet we claimed to be. My advisers and I posted a set position onto our Google Classroom, yet no one seemed to be interested. So, I took it upon myself. I emailed school board members, wrote stories and took photographs — posting the content onto @ladue.publications and laduepublications.com within a day of the meetings to provide immediate information to the public. I also implemented a recurring "Board Update" section onto Panorama Newsmagazine's "News to Know" spread — just another place that community members could go to understand the school board.
Anonymous Submission Process
Prior to the 2024-25 school year, Melodrama Literary Magazine reviewed submissions with the artist's name attached. As I found, this process often became partial as Melodrama staff evaluated the artist's strengths, rather than the quality of their work. To end this, I introduced and implemented an anonymous submission process. Each time a new work came in, I'd sort it into Melodrama's shared folder. Then, I'd add an entry to two spreadsheets — one that had a name attached, only to be seen by the editors in chief, and one that was fully anonymous for staff to review. The change ensured each conversation during submission meetings centered solely around the piece of artwork, exploring its individual strengths and drawbacks without bias.