Less is more, especially in Seaholm High School’s case.
Similar to the other smaller staffs represented at MIPA, Seaholm only has three students attending MIPA out of a total staff of 16.
Advisor Ben Harwood encouraged Seaholm’s managing editor,
“He sent his leaders and editors here to bring back information and knowledge to incorporate into the paper,” Filips said.
Filips is currently enrolled in the Advanced InDesign class, while Seaholm’s web editor is enrolled in the Upstart class. Their news editor is enrolled in Graphics and Illustrations.
“Our staff is very well rounded, we all have different strengths, and are here at MIPA trying to polish up our weaknesses,” Filips said.
The Seaholm Highlander puts out issues every 4-5 weeks during the school year, coming to a total number of about 8-9 issues a year.
“A lot of the in-depth stories and reporting jobs where you have to talk to a lot of different people and do a lot of research is difficult to get done if we did a weekly paper,” Kelly Martinek, Seaholm’s web editor, said.
Filips feels that the approach for a smaller staff at MIPA and in the newsroom is different than for a bigger staff.
“We all take on a lot more jobs and work together more often,” Filips said.
Workshop director Chad Sanders has been working with varied staff sizes for many years and feels that they are here for a common purpose but have differences.
“When there are even three or four of you, you have to go back and say ‘these are all the great things’ to 20 people, and say ‘and this is what we’re doing’ and have them go: ‘What are you talking about?’” Sanders said.
Along with the staffs’ approaches to gathering information, the social aspect of having a smaller staff also differs. Filips feels that rest of their staff that came to MIPA has become closer because there are so few of them and they can easily bounce ideas off of each other.
You can see the large staff’s point of view here.
[…] You can see the small staff point of view here. […]