Editing, Leadership, and Team Building

Currently in my second year on The Muse, my role in the newsmagazine has changed with time. Starting off my second year as an editor, I had to learn fast how to be a good editor - and what it means to support your staffers in any means necessary. Learning how to plan ahead, how to foster healthy communication, and how to still incorporate a little fun into the schedule, is helping me to strive as an editor and work for the good of our publication.

Leadership

Summer Trainings

During the summer of 2024, I was given my team of staffers: one writer and one photographer. I decided to help them kickstart their summer assignments for The Muse and introduce myself to them in a form of a slideshow. Making a resource full of all the things they might be too scared to ask, I helped to create a familiar bond before meeting them, kicking the school year off before it even began.

A copy of the slideshow

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CTE Updates

Throughout my first semester as an acting CTE, I have learned one important thing:
make sure to check in with your staffers, no matter how insignificant or trivial the path to that check up is. Filling out a CTE update chart every class helps me stay up to date with my staffers, and can help us manage the tasks and responsibilities they have on the publication.

Examples of the updates

Open Communication

After finding out my staffers for the 2024-2025 school year, I immediately pulled out my phone to find their numbers and make a group chat on Messages. Normally, our publication uses Slack for conversation, but having my own private chatting area for my staffers help us stay more in touch with each other and the work. There is will I text them quick reminders, answers to their questions, or just general conversation. Throughout this semester, I have made it my goal to be always open for my staffers, and make sure that they know to depend on me for most of their questions

Here are some examples of our chats

Organization

To help combat the struggle of keeping the draft cycle alive and functioning, throughout the year as a CTE I made sure to go through all of the expectations my staffers were given, making a comprehensive list of all major deadlines that they might have in the given cycle

Here is an example of one of my game plans with staff during our spirit week in March 2025

Print Budget

As I step into my new editor position as a Print Managing Editor, I was tasked with completing the print Budget for our issue 4. I had to communicate with each team in charge of creating content to make an educated choice of how many pages to assign to each story. Making sure to know all aspects of everything included in the issue was a challenging feat, but achieveable through constant communication to my content teams.

Here is an example of the print budget from Issue 4 2025

Editing

Editing Virtually

Most of my preliminary edits to staffer's work are made in google docs. the comment and suggest feature allows me to not only edit, but explain the things I am looking for while reading, providing an open conversation where I can clarify, elaborate, or encourage any edits that I give.