April Issue Deadline

Everyone should have their stories in today for the next issue.

Now that we have three more people, we need to talk about the division of duties.
It seems Sagar has taken on the duties of the advertising or business manager. He should be added to the staffbox as such.
Sree is listed as the photo editor. As such, he should make sure the cameras are always charged and that the photos are uploaded to Lucy's computer each day.

Do we need a news editor? A features editor? A sports editor? As it is, it seems as if I am making a lot of the assignments, which I would rather not do. The editor would decide which stories get assigned for their respective page or pages and whether a photo is needed and who will take the photo. They would also be responsible for seeing that those stories get turned in on time.

Wednesday through Friday should be devoted to laying out the next issue. The club list and the sports calendar need to be updated.

We also need to discuss Friday's food sale. Lucy, Sagar, Elizabeth, Boston, Sree and I will be at USC for High School Journalism Day. We will be back by sixth period. Eduardo will place the order. Dora will pick up the Subway sandwiches. A couple people need to get out of fourth period early to help set up. Everyone else should be willing to man the table during lunch. Adriel and Eduardo can clean up, since they are in my fifth period and I can tell the substitute that they have permission.

Story Ideas, Advertising Possibilities

Yesterday we came up with some good story ideas. Let's finalize them today. Stories are due on Monday, March 23, or Friday, March 20 if you want extra credit.

We also need to brainstorm advertising possiblities. I like the idea of approaching clubs. They can design their own ad, or we could take the information and design it for them.

Is anyone interested in covering the alumni beat? We could interview recent graduates about what college is like or we could do features on the old stars who went to HHS, along with their high school photo (the old yearbooks are locked in the library).

Let's Put This Issue to Bed

That means we need to get it to the printer today if we want to see it before next week. (Gardena Valley News does not print on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and needs 24-hour turnaround.)

Sports: pages 6-7 are half done. Boston: you can write a boys volleyball story saying they lost their first practice game but won their next game and we'll use the photo from the game against Banning.
Sagar and/or Eduardo make a simple box that says in small caps TELL US WHAT YOU THINK and then in a regular-size headline something like "Is Manny Ramirez worth $45 million?" Have a box to check yes, no, or I don't care; it's not my money. At the bottom, put "Return to Ms. Cusolito's mailbox or email us your thoughts at crimsonchron@aol.com" It should fill the two-column space at the bottom of page 6.

Elizabeth: Continue laying out pages 6-7 as the copy becomes available. Help proofread pages 1-5 as soon as they are done.

Poetry/Horoscopes: page 8 Leslie, Kiara, Yenory design this page using the two or three poems in the folder labeled Poetry on one of the desktops in the far right three computers.

Antonio, Sree: Go back to Ms. Ramos and explain we are talking about "an insert to the paper" not "an advertisement printed in the paper."

Today's Assignments

Microsoft Office has been installed on all the computers. I think there are still some bugs to be worked out. I noticed one computer you could only save Word to a shared folder, not to the desktop. On another computer, it looked like Yearbook staff had been using it. In any event, let's try to keep things organized. Save your work in a folder with your name on it, instead of cluttering up the desktop. Copy your work on a flash drive each day as backup. Most important: REMEMBER TO LOG OFF AND THE END OF THE DAY. Not that what we do is top secret, but I don't like the idea of anyone being able to read our work before it is published.

Mr. DeBonis is coming today to give a tutorial on using InDesign. Lucy, Kiara and Leslie (who have experience using Quark) should plan on taking part. Anyone else who is interested may look on and take notes. If you are not watching the tutorial, plan on doing the following:

Sagar and Eduardo: finish sports calendar
Elizabeth: newsbriefs
Yenory: reading and/or typing poetry submissions
Sree and Antonio: test your skills on hsj.org or come up with a tip sheet.

Creating a Newspaper

I look at our recent setback as a chance to start fresh with the computers. The G5 recovery is almost complete and the G4s will be reformatted soon, so that we are the only ones who have access to them. We will also be installing a layout program called Adobe InDesign, which has replaced Quark as the industry standard. Mr. Paul DeBonis will give us all a tutorial on using it.

In the meantime, go to www.hsj.org (see link at right) and explore the site. Take the Test Your Skills quiz. Read student newspapers from across the country. Look up summer journalism opportunities.