Lesson #1: Rivalry is apart of the newsroom.

"The rivalry is with ourself."- Luciano Pavarotti

Rivalry is a large part of the newsroom, you honestly wouldn't think by the look of things but if you dug deep enough and joined us you'd know that it is a larger part of the newsroom than you think.There are the simple rivalries over stories, pages, and photos between writers, editors, and photographers and there are more rivalries that develop due to stories and just rivalries because you've managed to piss us off. Over the past three years that I've been apart of the staff, we've developed some strange rivalries that have progressed over time.

 The rivalries between us staff members seem to dissipate depending on the day while our other rivalries seem to linger throughout the year unresolved. When we have rivalries in our newspaper, it's over little graphic things or over story and its usually resolved quite easy since most of us are pretty good friends. The biggest disputes always arise when somebody goes a little too far and starts to take action of what they want and really start to annoy some people or the largest thing is when a writer lies to an editor. The biggest no-no in our newspaper is not to lie to your editor about deadlines, or else it gets ugly. Overall, most of our little pity problems have no affect on us and at the end of the day we're all friends again, while some of our out of staff rivalries still live on.

One of our largest rivarlies is with another production in the school [not going to mention names] but it has went on since the day I've joined until this day.

We all have theories of why we're considered rivals, but the biggest reason is that we share rooms and labs. The fact that we share the Mac lab, seems to really keep us arguing and fighting over little things. For example, in the lab we have a "wall of shame" and a "wall of fame" which we created to put stuff we did and didn't like, and last year we had quite a problem with that once they started putting stuff on there [and after one of our editors put the front cover of one of their publications on the wall of shame]. The rivalry between us just seems to stay lingering around throughout the year over small little things.

The rivalry between the two publications just seems as if it should happen. At the end of the day, all of us respect our publications and the work that go into it and I think that we both lose track of that when we actually think about it. The rivalry does tend to be within ourselves since most the time we're too blind to realize that together, we're just the journalism kids and that either way we still put tons of work into something that we're both fans of.

Pre-lesson: Background

Any journalist would tell you that background is one of the most important steps of being apart of any journalistic creation. Even in my case, I could tell you that background information is prominent to creation of pretty much anything. You might have just read that last sentence and wondered, "what is his case?" well, I'm an editor apart of my school newspaper. Even though, it isn't the New York Times, and the most serious punishment I've gotten for anything bad is being yelled at by somebody who I consider one of my great friends (editor-in-chiefs) I could still tell you that background is important. 

This previous year, our newspaper took a total 180 degree change in terms of production. Our ex-adviser, who had crafted The Torch (which is the publication) from nothing had retired last year. We quickly got a new adviser, who has been great, and was even a student of our old adviser. With this new change, which was pretty much shock to all of us, we changed our format to a news-magazine. As well as that we created a Twitter account, a brand new website (after the admin of our old website, pretty much graduated and left us without a website) and pretty much did anything else to really amp our publication up.

As excited we were to start the year off together again, the year has started with a lot of stress as we're trying to perfect our art. As I write this blog post, we're in the middle of our production cycle and we're all pretty stressed out with the production (the stress comes natural with being atop the class). Our production cycle includes coming up with story ideas, creating which stories will be apart of the print addition, creating page layouts, actually writing and laying out the stories, and dealing with any obstacles along the way.

Apart of my personal profile, as I mentioned briefly in the ""About Lessons in the Newsroom Page" I'm the sports editor of the Torch, and I work along side a Sophomore, who I teach the ropes of being an editor along the way. Freshman year, I started the class as writer and made an impression on that years editors (I was surprised) and became the second-string sports editor alongside who is now one of the editors-in-chief. This year, it wasn't much of a surprise that I'd be taking part of the sports section again, since the switch from Sophomore to Junior year is usually a smooth transition at the same position. I also write and take photos. Apart of the class, you're expected to write stories regardless what your position is. I usually write in the sports and arts & entertainment section, and throughout my blog you'll see the music and sports influence. 

Like I mentioned earlier, background is an important part of anything. You don't get an assignment from a teacher without a syllabus or expectations (some teachers you do, but that's a story for a different day) or you aren't to told to do something without expecting the outcome. The same goes for a publication, you don't conduct an interview without knowing who you're going to interview and you don't write a story about something you have no idea about.

In this post, I hope I provided enough information to allow you to read the various blog posts that I will post to. I'm hoping that each lesson will inform you more about the journalistic world (even if it is the perspective of a high schooler) as well as give you a humorous entailment of each lesson. Hopefully the lessons will be relatable to your own life, and I hope that you enjoy the blog furthermore.

Now, let's get onto the lessons.