The Sagamore staff eats dinner together on Dec. 9 2015. A generous parent provided a dinner of Otto’s pizza, the staff easily went through six boxes. SARA HOGENBOOM/ SAGAMORE STAFF

This issue, The Sagamore wanted to show the readers how this newspaper is actually produced.

We start the process by pitching ideas for each section. Pitches are basically the article ideas. We gather these pitches and go over them decide if they should be written. There is a final step in this pitching process where we decide if an article should go in print, online or both. After we choose pitches, we come up with our article list. We dedicate a whole day in class to go over these articles once more so that the writers know what awaits them. On that day we assign writers to these articles and start to contact people to get interviews.  

First we have research checks, where we check in to see if the writer met the minimum three interview requirement. If so, we see if the interviews are transcribed, that way it is much easier to write the article. After research checks we have our draft 1. For the draft 1, we get a lot of edits done that are somewhat small edits. We get our d1 edits back and later on is the draft 2’s. Draft 2 is where we get another series of edits that are a bit more important and needs to be changed. This is where the edits are made by the editors and are then given back to the writer to change. Later on, we have a Section Writing Editor make the final edits so that the article can move to “To Copy.” In “To Copy,” the article is read by the copy editor to fix styling issues. “To Copy” leads to “To Adviser,” and when the article reaches “To Adviser,” we simultaneously start production. Production takes a whole week and it is where we produce the newspaper.

The advisers go over the articles and make their own edits and after that,  the article reaches the final point, which is “to layout” and at that point, the article can go on the layout.

Production is fun, productive and at times stressful. This is the time where the articles get placed into the newspaper. Production starts at 3 o’clock after school and goes till 9 pm.  We get a dinner break around 6 where we all leave our work and come together to socialize and have a good time. As the articles get moved into “to layout”, layout editors work their magic to produce the pages and how the articles are going to be formed in those pages. At the same time, visuals play a crucial role in the newspaper. By the beginning of the production, we aim to have at least two photos per article to make the newspaper entertaining and educational.

Once layout editors finish their work and put in all of the articles into the newspaper, we print the pages out to have the Editors-in-Chief go over it and make sure there are no troubles in the newspaper. Layout editors get the feedback from the Editors-in-Chief and they put in the edits made by them. Finally the layout editors print the pages once more so that the advisors could go over them. After the advisor edits, that section is good to PDF and to be sent.
As you can see, it takes a tremendous amount of time and work to produce the high school school newspaper. We put a lot of effort into it to make it as good as possible.