On January 7, the Kerronicle staff received its first hands-on experience in what it was like to work as a daily newspaper.
The 24-Hour News Cycle project was originally presented to Journalism I students as a way to show how a professional newspaper staff would work under day-to-day pressure. The staff collaborated with the Journalism I students as editors and over-seers of the project.
As the bell rang for first period at 7:45 AM, both Journalism I students and Kerronicle staff gathered in room 302 to get started on the project. After flying through introductions, our Editor-in-Chief immediately gave out assignments, making sure every person in the room had something to work on. Those who were assigned stories and interviews rushed out of the room in anticipation to get started.
Normal issues would take a week’s worth of staff meetings, another week of writing stories and holding interviews, and at least a week or more of editing and laying out pages, equaling to about a month or a little more for each issue to publish. However, with the 24-Hour News Cycle project, the aim is to publish a 12-page newspaper within a whole school day. This meant that instead of 24-Hours, our staff only had the seven hours of school plus an hour and forty-five minutes after school to write and edit stories, lay out pages, and publish an online PDF format newspaper.
Unfortunately, time seemed to be burning out quickly. When the bell rang for second period it surprised all of us. Many people opted to stay throughout second period, and by the end of second period all the stories except for the ones placed on center spread were finished and waiting for edits to occur. Students ambled in and out of the door, making the journalism room more crowded than usual.
Third period was the worst. The newspaper staff share the journalism room with the yearbook staff; so when yearbook staff members arrived, there were question marks in their eyes when they saw newspaper members sitting in their chairs, typing away at their computers, and plugging in their laptops to charge.
To make matters worse, seniors were piling in to fill out their senior profiles for the yearbook, causing the journalism room to be overcrowded and stuffed with people. Not a single minute was peaceful.
Some of the newspaper members sacrificed their lunch time to work on the 24-Hour-News Cycle project, and even with sacrificed time, we still had more than half the paper to work on, which we attacked with ferocity throughout fourth period and right now, after school. As the clock reached near 4:15 PM, the challenge of producing a paper within eight hours drew to an end.
By experiencing a project such as the 24-Hour News Cycle, we experienced the stress that a professional newspapaper staff goes through on a daily or weekly basis.So many of us were frazzled by the intensity, but it was still an amazing experience.
Because of the overwhelming success of Friday, we have decided to publish the project as a full paper. We put in the extra few hours we needed to complete the paper and this is the result.
