The Corral is the school newspaper run by students and journalism teacher Christine Stricker. You may have seen the papers being delivered to your ac lab, but, have you ever wondered how the newspaper is made?
“So, at the beginning of the deadline, the students pitch their story ideas – what they want to write,” Stricker said.
“After you have the idea, you have to think of, well, who is relevant, someone relevant in school, or an expert in the field that I can interview,” News editor Esther Wang said. “After, I’ll review the interview. I’ll say ‘What is interesting about the interview and what is something I can put on paper?’”
“People take forever to write because procrastination is fun,” Editor-in-Chief Brie Williams said. “Then, eventually, people edit and then, we start layout week where we put it on (Adobe) InDesign and, basically, put it on the page, make it look really pretty, and then, we send it off to the printer.”
“We send our pages to a professional printer in Columbia, MIssouri. Then, they print it on a printing press and send it back to us,” Stricker said.
It’s not just the newspaper staff that make The Corral come together, but the school contributes as a whole.
“I think a lot of people in this school are really open to being interviewed and having their pictures taken. That’s helping me get a lot of experience and I think, from that experience, I ended up really liking journalism,” Assistant copy editor Diego Perez Palomino said.
“We do write about things that the students care about because we talk to people and we figure out what people want to read about, what people want to know,” Williams said. “I think it’s just cool that we get to have that voice, even though we are so young.”
While young people’s opinions are often overlooked, The Corral is an opportunity for students to express themselves.
“As a younger generation, so many of us can’t vote and can’t have a voice; the paper lets us do that,” Williams said.
“Student journalism is not only writing the paper for the school. It is also, I think, a reflection of what students care about through what we are choosing to write,” Wang said.
Overall, the staff hope that other students and teachers read and enjoy The Corral.
“What I wanted to do as Editor-in-Chief, was make the paper fun to read, but also cover important topics,” Williams said. “I think we’ve done that with stuff like plan time and just about school issues in general.”
“I hope that they are reading the paper because my students work really hard on the things that they do,” Stricker said. “I hope they see it as a place where they can maybe learn something. They could enjoy reading it.”
