Editing
Throughout my time on the MIHS Islander staff, I have both refined my personal editing abilities and enhanced the editing practices of our newspaper. I have edited countless articles in my leadership roles and contributed several editing documents to improve the overall writing quality of our articles.
The "MIHS Islander Article Template" document:
There was already an article-planning doc in use when I became Editor in Chief, but I found that it was not incredibly productive and I thought it was missing a few elements. So I recreated the doc and renamed it the "MIHS Islander Article Template." This doc is crucial to our editing process, as it allows us to see the development of an article idea and easily provide feedback along the way. The doc also makes editing more streamlined since all of the elements required to write an article are on this one document, rather than having different drafts/interviews on different documents.
Editing articles:
When I edit articles, I look for grammatical and AP style mistakes, but I also look at how the overall message of the article could be improved. I try to leave comments that are both positive and constructive. Below are excerpts from a sports article written by staff writer Tiffany Zhang that I recently edited:
Mercer Island Boys Basketball fell short 68-52 to the Bellevue High School Wolverines in their final regular season game, Tuesday, Feb 1.
The first few points of the game were scored by junior captain Jackson Bredy, who kick-started Mercer Island’s offense with a two-pointer followed by a three-pointer closely after. The Wolverines’ led 12-7 by the end of the first quarter.
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Bredy and McCrary traded off scoring for the Islanders in the fourth quarter, going perfect on free throws but their efforts weren’t enough as Bellevue only continued to extend their lead.
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“I try not to let that kind of stuff affect me but there were points when their crowd and band were loud enough to the point where you couldn’t hear a teammate that was 5 feet away from you,” Bredy said.
"MIHS Sports Coverage Survival Guide" Document
Before I became Sports Editor, the process of covering sports games was in disarray. There was no standardization for editors accompanying staff writers to games (I covered my first game by myself) and there were no written procedures for how and when to write the actual article. As a result, there was minimal sports coverage in my first two years on the staff, and many of the sports articles published were not the highest quality they could be.
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And so I made a "survival guide" at the end of my sophomore year to make future staff writers' sports-coverage experiences as easy as possible and to improve sports coverage for years to come. I am no longer the sports editor, and this document is still in use.
Reflecting on an older article: MIHS Coaches Reflect on How Their Sports Have Changed
This is an article I wrote in my sophomore year as the Sports Columnist, and while I am happy with the way it turned out, there are edits I would make if I were to rewrite the article now.
No MIHS sports team has remained exactly as it was 20 years ago, whether the changes have been physical or cultural, for better or for worse.
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Some MIHS coaches played for their teams as teenagers, returning now in a new role, and have witnessed the changes firsthand.
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Math teacher and head wrestling coach Lee Jahncke is a key factor in helping current MIHS wrestlers today reach their potential, and contributed to the team when he was in high school in 1999, giving him plenty of insight on how the sport has evolved.
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“The biggest difference in terms of participation is that there are significantly more female wrestlers who are now part of the sport,” Jahncke said. “When I was in high school, I think we had only one or two female wrestlers try out the sport.”
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As well as wrestling, Jahncke competed in a selection of other sports, giving him a keen understanding of how athletics have changed as a whole.
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“The expectations and the amount of time that athletes put in now is dramatically different than what it used to be,” Jahncke said.
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Science teacher and cross country coach Danny Naylor, who graduated from MIHS in 2007, has been running for almost his entire life. He said the decision to come back to the cross country team was easy because he loves the sport.
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“Generally the culture of the team being very inclusive and supportive, [with] everyone working hard and helping out their teammates, [makes it] such a great team to be a part of,” Naylor said.
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While Naylor agrees that the sport has changed since he was in high school, he said he doesn’t believe the change was for the better.
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“There are more people doing the sport for PE credit than I remember,” Naylor said. “I think that has led to a little bit of a more relaxed and less competitive atmosphere.”
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Although some things have changed, other aspects of the sport remain the same.
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“There always have been and will always continue to be those who push themselves to their limits and those who do not,” Naylor said. “But there is still a lot of hard work being done and a lot of people enjoying the team.”
This lede is not as concise as I would like it to be. I would either rephrase it completely, or take out the physical/cultural part of the sentence.
If I were to re-conduct this interview, I would have asked Jahncke to elaborate on the number of females participating in wrestling then vs. now, since this would be an interesting topic to discuss further in the article.
I would say "physics" teacher
This paragraph almost restates what is in the quote. I would try to make it transition into the quote a little bit smoother.
I would interview more people if I were to redo this article to get more diverse perspectives. I would definitely talk to a female coach as well.