The Student Newspaper Survival Guide

From the Author: Five Ways to Build an Award-Winning Newspaper
Author Rachele Kanigel
There’s nothing like a big award – or two, or ten – to bring prestige to your publication, motivate your staff and help graduates land internships and jobs. There can also be an added, benefit: External recognition has a way of keeping pesky administrators at bay. It’s hard for campus officials to criticize a newspaper when professionals have just named it one of the best in the state or the country.

As an adviser or editor, you can’t make your newspaper win awards. But you can improve the staff’s chances by creating a professional environment where students strive for excellence and do prize-worthy work. Here are some tips for helping your staff build an award-winning newspaper.

1. Train. Train. Train. Training is essential. If your paper doesn't already have a comprehensive newsroom training program, create one. And if you already train your staff, add more training. Make sure your training program includes all aspects of the publication – design, photography, online, writing, reporting and editing. Incorporate team-building and leadership-development exercises.
   
   
2. Take a stand. Contest judges have respect for bold, well-argued opinion pieces. Train your opinion writers to be fair and tasteful, respecting their sources and their readers, but also encourage them to fight – and write – for what they believe in. Teach students to back up a strongly worded opinion piece with facts to create a cogent and compelling argument. Share examples from the professional press, as well as other student newspapers, of well-written and effective editorials and columns.
   
   
3. Push projects. Encourage your staff to go beyond day-to-day coverage with special projects, series, special sections and enterprise stories. If a big story breaks on campus or an important issue is brewing, urge the staff to do an in-depth report. When you publish a project or special story, be sure to package it smartly with display type, graphics, sidebars and a logo that sets it apart.
   
   
4. Sweat the small stuff. Pay attention to details large and small. Misspelled words, headlines that don’t make sense and punctuation errors can put you in the reject pile before you can say “Oops!”
   
   
5. Dare to be different. The professional press may not be able to afford to go out on a limb. You can. Experiment. Be bold.