Article by Cody Milne
Video by Abigail Campbell
Estimates say that there are 1,600 colleges experimenting with student run newspapers. Here at Minarets Press, our job is to inform the students about what is going on around the school, but have you ever wondered who was behind this? Well look no further for a small insight into the Minarets Press organization.
When walking into the journalism classroom, one can see the journalists working independently and practicing their interviewing skills to slowly, but surely, get better at interacting with their interviewees and collaborating on the vision for their upcoming projects. Every journalist is paired with a video editor to form a news team and seasoned journalists are often paired with new journalists, slowly guiding them to become a better reporter.
But what you also notice is two people constantly working: Editor-in-Chief senior Hazel Taintor and Director of Media senior Ryan Abner. One can see Abner aggressively fiddling with his camera and at the same time giving advice to a student who is editing a video. Taintor can be seen sitting down with headphones in and working on what seems to be homework, but it turns out she is correcting her peers' articles and giving them suggestions.
Taintor joined the Minarets Press team in the 2020/2021 school year. Her role for the team is the head editor. Taintor is an amazing writer, so her being the head editor makes sense with her love for writing. She adjusted to the role quickly and smoothly. The editor gives advice to the writers before the final deadline and she normally takes two to four hours editing the class's articles. While she does have to edit those articles, she does her own articles too.
Taintor says, “I really like getting to write about different aspects of the school, to really go in depth into things that don't really get the most coverage.”
Abner joined the team in the 2019/2020 school year, so that means he is considered a senior in this aspect of media. He is the Head Director of Media for a reason; he has been editing videos ever since middle school. Abner recognizes the workload, but still handles it smoothly and the product comes out in good quality. He guides the younger generation of journalists in the team and provides feedback for the videos.
When it comes to a journalist's perspective, we have fun with our articles. Our veteran journalists choose what we want to write or make a video on and we normally find a partner that is new to journalism so we can help them. Writing this article has been on my mind for a while so we can highlight the two people that really deserve it. We have fun with what we do. Each student has their own personality and they express it through their writing, so evert article is filled with emotion and creativity. If this has sparked some inspiration in you, why not join the team?