Page 5 Students First Knight Life: newspaper staff sees challenges, rewards sharing the stories of West Florence By Catherine Williamson, Editor The Knight Life, West Florence’s newspaper, has a staff of just nine people, all 10th-12th graders with completely different backgrounds. Knight Life is run by two editors and two advisors. Our editors are myself, Catherine Williamson (12th), and my co-editor, Charleigh Sprawls (11th). Every day, we work together to create fun, new ways to get our reporters to interact with each other, their interviewees, and their stories. I love working with Charleigh because we are always able to bounce new ideas off each other, including how to edit others’ stories and even write our own. I also love being able to work with such an amazing staff of reporters and my advisors, Kim Cimney and Natalie Hilley. Our staff is full of fun and interesting people, including four exchange students. Being in newspaper has so many fun, and at times, difficult challenges involved. First, we brainstorm ideas for stories and claim the ones that fit our abilities and interests. Then, we immediately get to work setting up our interviews. For our first issue, we interviewed over 30 new staff teachers and took their pictures. We also did several stories on the homecoming and spirit week happenings. Charleigh even got to interview FS1’s superintendent, Dr. O’Malley. After everyone’s stories and pictures are put together and finished, we begin our computer design layout process, which is how we make our newspaper look like.. well, a newspaper! Using Microsoft Publisher, we create our paper using several methods to design our stories and pictures so that they are easiest to read and catch the eyes of our readers. We also travel around town Our first issue! and try to sell advertisements to local business owners and chain businesses. We are a small group of people, which can be quite challenging when it comes to delegating our stories and making it as fair as possible. Students are always busy interviewing, writing, editing or taking photos. As someone who has always been fascinated by media and newspaper, but has never been had the opportunity to be involved in the school paper, this has been the most amazing experience for me -- to be able to meet so many incredible people and watch my peers grow to loving journalism. I am so sad to be leaving these people and going to college next year, but I take solace in knowing that Knight Life will reach so many other people’s hearts, reporters and readers alike. Our website!
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