As a staff, we have two main inclusion goals: to report on everyone at least once a year and report on multiple aspects of everyone’s personality. We have two staff rules set to achieve our goals.
- Refrain from interviewing someone on the same topic twice. We love continuous coverage, but interviewing the same set of people for each story limits the number of possible perspectives.
- While researching who to interview, check when was the last time we’ve quoted them. If we haven’t interviewed the person in the previous year, then go ahead and interview them. Interview them if you think their perspective would add something unique to the story, and we haven’t talked to them about the topic yet.
- Each story should strive for three student quotes that range amongst grade level and gender identity.
We recognize that everyone has numerous aspects of their person that deserve to be covered. I don’t solely pick interviewees based on their outward-facing identity but on how they present themselves and their interests in the community. When I’m writing a story for my Sustainability & Ethics series, I look for people interested in environmental science, sustainability, justice, or expertise in the topic. I don’t solely focus on their race, age, or gender, because that diversity will come with including more perspectives.
During the 2020 to 2021 school year, most stories were political in some sense. Politics were the reality of the conversations our community was having. Our school is mainly democratic, but it isn’t 100% democratic. I encouraged my staff to search for students who didn’t share the same opinion and cover the opposing view. To ensure a well-balanced publication, we can’t ignore that some people are republican.
We follow a similar set of standards while recruiting staff as we do when searching for interviewees. To know what’s happening in all corners of our school and accurately decide what should be covered, we need students on staff who are a part of multiple community areas. When recruiting staff members, we look for people involved in numerous areas of the community and can bring multiple perspectives to our coverage.
As a director, I am dedicated to giving voice to everyone, no matter their identity or opinions, and to every aspect of everyone. Covering one person once on one topic isn’t an accurate representation of that person. As a publication, I encourage us to strive to cover a person multiple times and for numerous different stories.