By Julia Mericle
News Assignment Editor
When reading The Bona Venture, there is a byline under each story giving credit to the writer. It is easy to assume that each writer just wrote their story by themselves and then all the stories are simply pieced together in the newspaper. However, until I began my adventure as assignment news editor this semester, I did not realize how much of a team effort it really is to get each story onto the pages.
Each story in The BonaVenture gets sent from email to email and is read over and over by many sets of eyes. The assistant news editor, myself, news editor, managing editor, editor-in-chief and an associate editor all read each news story at least once.
By having each of the stories I write edited by my peers, and by editing the stories of my peers as well, I understand the paper would never be able to come together each week if it were not for the teamwork of all the writers down in the newsroom on Wednesday nights. Our reliance on each other encourages us to do our best work.
When I get my stories back they have comments written on the bottom by each of the other editors and when I edit other writer’s stories I write comments too. These comments are helpful, encouraging and sometimes even funny. However, they always display how much each member of the BV wants their peers to succeed and produce a quality newspaper each week.
After the stories are edited and placed on the pages, they still go through several rounds of edits. I enjoy this aspect of being assignment news editor, because it emphasizes how much each writer needs each other. Even the most experienced writers cannot catch every misspelling or comma error.
While I never like to stay up too late doing homework, I find that I never mind staying up until the early morning hours to finish each week’s edition of The Bona Venture with such a hardworking group of writers and editors.
mericlje13@bonaventure.edu
