How to Join and Thrive at Your College Newspaper

Joining a college newspaper is easy. At most colleges, you can just start showing up at the meetings to join. Becoming a valuable member? Well, that can be relatively easy too, as long as you're willing to do the work. For journalism students, becoming a part of the college newspaper is the first step toward your writing career. For non-journalism students, being on the newspaper is an excellent way to improve your writing skills and to share your expertise. But no matter who you are, you don't want to become a burden to the team. Jumping in and writing your first few articles can be daunting if you don't know what you're doing. To avoid exasperating the editors or stressing yourself out, these eleven pointers will help you understand your role and responsibilities as a reporter for your campus newspaper.

The Meetings and Assignments

1. Picking your assignment

So, you're at your first college newspaper meeting. Typically your editors will go over the stories they need and ask for volunteers. Since you're new, some of the best stories you can pick are feature stories or news stories about special lectures. Feature stories often involve writing profiles on students, professors, staff, or clubs. News stories covering special lectures (like from a visiting professor) are easy, since they don't involve a lot of legwork. Don't take stories about campus controversies (such as the administration vs. students). People you interview may give you a hard time, and you'll have to be astute and experienced to successfully deal with them.

If you feel you're not ready to interview anyone (which is absolutely necessary for the above stories), consider writing an opinion or review (movies, television, or music).

2. Making the deadline

You'll be given a deadline when you take an assignment. If you're not sure whether you can make that deadline, then don't volunteer for the story. If you take an assignment and later realize that you can't write it in time (or can't get an interview fast enough), then tell your editor. She may give you an extension. It's vitally important to inform your editor as he may be counting on your story to fill a particular page.

The Writing Process

3. Writing the lead and the nut graph

Newspapers articles are somewhat different from what you may be used to writing. The opening, however, has the same principles. Leads (your opening sentence) should grab your reader's attention. There are many different types of leads that reporters use. Some of them include using a thought-provoking quote (that ties in with the theme of the story), a surprising statistic, a staccato sentence (i.e., short and pithy: "He never thought it would happen to him"), or an anecdotal lead (telling a short story).

The nut graph is just newspaper-speak for the thesis. It tells the reader the what, where, when, and sometimes the why and how of a story. Don't go past 30 words for a nut graph. Your nut graph could also be the lead of the story (especially for breaking news and serious stories).

4. Applying the inverted pyramid structure

The format of newspaper articles follow something called the inverted pyramid structure. My journalism textbook offered great advice when it advised its readers to never try to make sense of that image. Basically, you want to put all the most important information first in the story and put less important information toward the end. If a story is too long, then your editor can just cut off a paragraph toward the end.

5. Using quotes

You should use quotes liberally in your story. Quotes add life and energy to your story. You should also be sure you have quotes high in the story (toward the top). To get quotes, you obviously have to interview people, and your stories should have more than one person quoted. Avoid using quotes that just tell facts (e.g., instead of "Seven students formed this club," use "I'm thrilled we finally put this club together"). Always make sure you have the exact quote written down. Never just paraphrase what a person said and put quotes around it. (Paraphrasing properly, however, is perfectly acceptable.)

Let's say you're writing a feature story on a student. Obviously you should interview the student, but you should also interview their friends and possibly their professors or coaches. If you're writing on a special lecture, use quotes from the speaker and ask audience members afterward what they thought of it.

If you need pointers for the interview itself, check out this Web site by News College.

6. Writing a proper-sized article

Unless your editors say otherwise, your article should be between 650 to 1,000 words. Anything fewer than 500 words is far too little. If you turn in something like a 300-word article, your editors will have to spend a lot of time beefing it up to make it suitable for print. You'll get them in a pretty foul mood if you keep submitting short articles and may even lose your byline if they have to write most of your article for you.

7. Avoiding editorializing

Editorializing is when you insert your own opinion into the story. Unless you're writing an opinion or a review for the newspaper, you should almost always avoid editorializing. Let the readers form their own opinions. Writing something like "Neilson was an excellent speaker" is editorializing. Writing "Neilson's booming voice kept the audience's attention during the entire address" is not (as long as it's true).

8. Proofreading

Always, always proofread. Just because you have editors and copy editors to fix your mistakes doesn't mean you can turn your assignment in with no proofreading. Your editors will judge you and your poor grammar, and you're less likely to be chosen to become an editor yourself one day. After your articles are published in the campus newspaper, look at the finished product. What changes have the editors made? Do you make any mistakes over and over again?

Note: This summary of the writing process is by no means exhaustive. If you feel you can't quite grasp writing articles, taking a beginning journalism course is a great way to learn in a more relaxed environment.

Other Essential Information

9. Knowing the ABCs of journalism

Accuracy, brevity, and clarity are among the most important concepts in journalism. The readers are depending on you to give them the information they need. Accuracy is the most important of the three. Always double-check facts, quotes, and names. Make sure you never libel anyone (reporting hurtful falsehoods). If you're unsure about something, ask your editors. Brevity and clarity are for the readers' sake. Creativity certainly has a role in newspaper articles but don't make your prose more complicated than it needs to be.

10. Getting the materials you need

In theory, all you need is a pencil, a notepad, and access to a computer. But you may want to invest in a voice recorder if you're worried about not getting exact quotes down. If you do use a recorder, always ask permission from your interview subjects (it's illegal to not tell them, and you should record you asking permission and their answer). You'll also need a copy of the Associated Press Style Book (unless your editors say otherwise). The AP Style Book provides style advice like when to abbreviate, what to put in quote marks, and how to spell certain words (e.g., Web site vs. website), etc.

11. Plagiarizing and how very wrong it is

Plagiarism is a serious offense. You're much better off telling your editor you can't make the deadline (even if it's your fifth time doing so) than plagiarizing. Not only are you stealing another person's work for your own gain, but you could seriously damage not only your reputation but the newspaper's. Imagine if a reader caught your plagiarized work. College newspapers have a tough time already being taken seriously. So don't do it. Ever.

Conclusion

Despite all these warnings and strict guidelines, writing for a college newspaper can be fun and rewarding. It's especially thrilling to see your byline in the paper and getting recognition for your writing skills. As long as you try your best, the editors will be happy to have you on the team.