Innovations in Team Reporting Breaking News Lawrence High School Journalism • Pacemaker Entry

Examples

1. Case surge stresses schools

Cuyler Dunn, co editor-in-chief of The Budget print newspaper, reflects

I was sitting in my room during my sixth day of quarantine when my phone started to blow up with messages from friends in a neighboring school district that their school was closing for the next few days. Having already begun a story about COVID-19 leading to a shortage of subs in our district, I knew it was time to get the story out soon. Our community needed important information about the COVID-19 situation at schools and need it quickly. I reached out to our editors and breaking news team to start getting to work. Because I was isolating in my room, I didn’t have the ability to get interviews. Luckily, we had staff members ready to help. While I began writing the story, our newspaper co-editor started editing, our yearbook editor in chief got to work researching district protocols, a young reporter started interviewing people in our district and our yearbook photo editor started getting interviews from students. News editors, yearbook editors, photographers and more jumped in and started contributing to the breaking news story. It was an all-hands-on deck approach, regardless of role on staff. The story got published in an hour and brought vital updates regarding the COVID-19 situation to our community during the height of the Omicron wave.

2. 'Devious Licks'

Andrew Phalen, co editor-in-chief of lhsbudget.com, reflects

While we had a newer staffer gathering interviews, the 'devious licks' coverage was quickly sped up after the Lawrence High administration locked most bathrooms due to rampant vandalism and theft. The staffer had been interviewing anonymous students who were partaking in the trend. Another editor-in-chief, Cuyler Dunn, and I began to cover it as breaking news and took over the writing portion of the coverage. That day at school, we had photographers take pictures of closed bathrooms and other locked classrooms. The collaborative effort allowed Cuyler to focus on drafting the story while myself and other staffers transcribed interviews and gathered other information. We were able to publish the story the same afternoon and the story received national attention in the Associated Press, Washington Post and other major publications as a linked source.

3. Maskless celebration breaks rules

Kenna McNally, co editor-in-chief of the Red & Black yearbook, reflects

I was scrolling through Instagram during lunch the Monday after a football win when I saw a video of 20-plus football players as well as coaches and one administrator crowded into our school's weight room celebrating the team's win. Immediately, I reached out to my adviser and a fellow editor-in-chief to get some more information and see if this was something that we should report on. As we started looking into the incident more, the video and several other similar videos were quickly pulled from the team's Instagram. Luckily we had screen-recorded the video, expecting a reaction like this, so when we began to interview local health professionals as well as the team's coaches and school administrators, we would have proof to back up what we were investigating. We started the interview process by talking to an employee of the Douglas County Health Department, followed by interviewing LHS's athletic director and attempts at interviewing two of the football team's coaches. While the majority of the interviewing and writing was done by myself and another editor-in-chief, we partnered with a student that is a part of our school's video department to edit the video that had been posted to Instagram. The edited version included text overlay to explain exactly what was happening and allowed us to focus in on the administrator and several coaches, as the goal of our reporting was not to blame the athletes for this behavior but instead bring attention to the adults who allowed this violation of COVID safety protocols to occur. After the posting of this story, I and my fellow editor-in-chief received quite a bit of backlash from football players, their friends and some teachers. Despite the backlash, we knew that this story was necessary and were proud of what we had produced.