Fall 2023 reflection
When I joined Verde, I didn't know what to expect. Beginning Journalism had taught me some of the mechanics of journalism — the pyramid structure of news stories, how to input placeholder text into InDesign, and how to structure headlines, but one semester on Verde taught me that the most important parts of journalism are outside of grammar and AP Style. I learned communication: how to walk into businesses and ask them to buy ads, how to interview sources, how to work with story partners, and how to advocate for myself within my own publication. Beginning Journalism felt like people working on stories separately and simultaneously, but being on the Verde staff feels like a community.
One of the first things the seniors told the new staffers was that production was the best part of being on Verde. I was skeptical, but after staying late at school to design stories for two issues, I agreed with them. Production showed me that Verde was more than a class to take for credit and that everyone was committed to contributing to the magazine. Fishing the print magazine out of the brown cardboard boxes and flipping through the pages was eye-opening: I could finally see the stories that everyone else had been working on, and I could tell how my work fit into the greater whole.
The ad-selling field trip Verde took to downtown Palo Alto in my first few weeks on staff erased the idea that journalism meant sitting in front of a computer. I didn’t know if I would be able to walk into a business I had never been in before to ask a complete stranger to invest in a magazine I had been part of for less than a month. But I did. I stuttered and tripped over my words, the copies of Verde I had been holding flopping around in my hands. The “no” I heard didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that I was able to walk out of that store and into another one. And eventually, the words I had to say flowed smoothly. Eventually, I heard a “yes.”
In Verde, we have production cycles, so everything we did six weeks before we had to do over again. But it didn’t feel repetitive to me, because each time, I did something different. For the first issue, I filled three pages co-writing the cover story. For the next issue, I had to cut over half the text from my perspective. I think that’s the nature of journalism: conveying meaningful ideas in just the right amount of space. I had to think about what would matter to the audience.
After being on Verde, I look at other journalistic work differently. I wonder what the first draft looked like. I wonder what the writer decided to leave out. I wonder what the original idea was, and how it evolved. I wonder how other people contributed to the final product. Verde showed me that the process of publishing a story matters, and how all staff members share in that process. Because even a single-byline story is impossible to write alone.
Spring 2023 Reflection
The second semester of Verde was much more eventful than the first. After pushing through frenzied productions, numerous panicked phone calls, and a long string of 40-minute late-night zooms, I gained a new perspective on the magazine.
The leadership selection process, while daunting to think about, went smoothly. It gave me a chance to talk about what Verde means to me and how I’ve grown both as a person and journalist. It also allowed me to recognize the hard work and accomplishments of everyone else on staff. Much of the time, as you work on your individual stories, the work of everyone else isn’t seen. One of the most exciting moments in Verde is reading the new magazine from page 1 to see the combination of everyones’ work. Through the speeches and cover packages of staffers running for leadership positions, I learned how all the work they had done led to personal and journalistic growth, much as it did for me.
Going from being a staff writer to an EIC wasn’t a small transition, especially because it was intimidating to edit seniors’ work. But as I recognized errors from minor AP Style inconsistencies to larger themes such as changing entire story angles, I realized that I knew more about journalism than I thought I did. I also had to work to be more careful with the edits I suggested, reading every story multiple times and scrutinizing each design to make sure what I was saying was respectful, made sense, and was possible to accomplish.
A huge aspect of being an EIC is not the writing or the designing; instead, I discovered in the first cycle, what takes up a lot of time and effort are the smaller things that make the magazine possible. For the first time, everything I had previously taken for granted: story assignments, the cover, the table of contents, and even printing the magazine was up to me and the rest of the MEIC team.
In the first cycle of being an editor-in-chief, the rest of the editors and I, to meet the deadline, had to send the magazine to the printers with multiple obvious errors. This was very difficult for us to do since we felt that Verde represented us as journalists and we didn’t want to showcase our substandard work. But after uploading the final PDF, I felt proud of what we had accomplished. We made a magazine, errors and all, and that was something to celebrate.
I’ll miss all the seniors. Verde won’t be the same without them. It will be jarring to open a table of contents in the magazine without all of their names and strange to see their classroom seats filled by other people. However, I’m excited to meet the new staff writers in the upcoming year and see the new direction that they will take Verde in.
Fall 2024 Reflection
The cover of the first issue of this school year was a great photo. It was a striking close-up with a colorful background that provided depth of field. The subject of the photo wasn't a member of the Paly community, however. Or even a person. It was a sheep.
I wish I could say that the choice to include a sheep on the cover was the result of careful planning and preparation and that the sheep had done something extraordinary: broken a world record, cured cancer, or won the Nobel Peace Prize. The truth is that the sheep was just standing in a field, poking its head through the fence.
But the photo of the sheep intrigued us in a way that no other photo did. We felt that the sheep, and the story about Hidden Villa Farm that accompanied it, was important to highlight. We realized that the theme of memories and time passing connected many of our stories. We were looking baaa-ck. (I blurted out that magazine title as a joke, but somehow it stuck.)
Amid leadership reconfiguration on staff and anxiety about starting the year, it was fun to be light-hearted with the first issue. It doesn't mean we shied away from serious topics, though. Because our staff was so small, I wrote a single-byline story about the trend of local theater groups closing.
For the second issue, however, the mood was different. The weekend before we sent out story assignments, Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing over 1,000 people. Instinctively, we knew that these events would affect our community. In our next issue, we sought to examine these effects. I admired how the writers we assigned to the story handled such a complex topic, especially as the story went through several different versions. The final story was a group effort of writing, editing, and designing the six-page spread.
I attended a school board meeting where the school board passed two resolutions condemning antisemitism and Islamophobia in the community. The atmosphere at the meeting was intense because of how people were being directly affected by this issue. When interviewing parents for a breaking news story, I witnessed people from different backgrounds coming together to discuss a path forward. At the same time, this meeting exposed some divisions in the community.
I'm proud of the work Verde produced during this time, and I hope we can look back on it and appreciate how we captured the feelings and experiences of the people around us.
It's been a great experience working with the leadership team. Without Managing Editors, we have all pitched in to take care of certain tasks. Of course, we can always improve our coordination, which is one of our goals for next semester.
I'm excited to have a larger staff next semester. The classroom will finally be full!
Spring 2024
I’m writing this reflection on a Google Doc titled “Last ever reflection” which is already making me emotional. My last day in Verde is Friday, May 24, which also happens to be my last day of high school.
It’s bittersweet. I was able to spend time with all the new staffers this semester, all of whom are bringing fresh, exciting ideas and perspectives to Verde. But it wasn’t nearly enough time to get to know all of them.
Leadership selection was at times stressful and agonizing but I appreciate how it allowed us to celebrate everyone’s accomplishments and look toward the future of the publication. I’m confident that our choices of editors are the best to continue Verde, which was confirmed this cycle when all the seniors became staff writers again and had the new editors edit our work. I’m proud to see the new section editors step up as well.
I remember how difficult it was to transition from being edited to being the editor, so I tried to give as much advice and support to the new EICS as I could. After I finished my stories, I walked one of the new EICs through the process for placing stories in the magazine and sending to printers. And after a document-deletion mishap led to all the social media passwords being deleted, I worked with the new editors to remember the passwords and create a new record for posterity.
Being a senior staff writer was definitely a different experience. I covered the retirement of a longtime, impactful history teacher and the symbolism of flags in local politics, both of which required multiple interviews with many different sources. Designing both of these stories felt more fun than it had before, kind of like a puzzle I had to fit together. As an EIC, I missed doing InDesign work other than placing the magazine, so I enjoyed exercising my creativity. These were actually the stories I finished the fastest out of all the stories I’ve written for Verde! (Shout-out to my awesome story partners Maya Rajbhandari and Nadia Soberg!)
To paraphrase from my co-senior-staff-writer Austin Eng, as I step into MAC105 for the last time, I take a look baaa-ck. Somehow I’m the unofficial pun and headline generator of Verde but I can feel my powers wearing off. I think that’s fitting. I’m ready to pass the torch to the next pun master. Maybe their random joke will also end up as the title of a magazine issue.
I’m so appreciative of my adviser and fellow seniors for sticking with me these past two years and I’m excited to see what comes next!