erhaps when you were a child, filling in your first coloring book, your mother told you to stay inside the lines. That may be a standard for coloring books, but in yearbooks, following the standard, doing things the way they have always been done or, if you will, staying inside the lines, can stifle creativity and give your yearbook a dated, stale look. Experiment, open your mind to new ideas, new approaches, new looks.
Fall 1997
Developing innovative fund-raising ideas is a challenge for almost every yearbook staff. The Alchemist staff at Concord Middle School, Concord, N.C., met that challenge by selling nearly $1,000 in patron ads for its 1998 yearbook.
No doubt about it, developing questions is the reason most journalists put off interviewing – they cannot think of what to ask. Here are five tips to help your staff get past “question block.”
The growing trend of school systems across the country changing from a six-or seven-period day to a block schedule has made it even more challenging to produce a yearbook.
YES/NO QUESTIONS
Never ask them, even if you follow up with “why?” They only give you weak quotes that force you to use awkward transitions. Check your questions and rewrite them to eliminate yes/no questions. A questions is yes/no if it begins with any of these words: do, does, did, have, has, had, can, could, should, will, would, was, were, might, must.
Sami A. Slaquer
8:30 a.m., somewhere on the West Coast – Sami is assigned the hottest story of the year – an investigative piece on the new speed bumps that are causing damage to cars in the school’s parking lot.
Anne Whitt, adviser of student publications at Dr. Phillips High School, Orlando, Fla., was recently selected as a 1997 Special Recognition Adviser by the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund (DJNF) in its annual National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year award program.
Everyone has heard of having a yearbook signed after it is published, but how about before? For a small fee, students at Albemarle Road Middle School, Charlotte, N.C., were able to reserve a spot for their signatures on the class introduction and endsheet designs of the 1997 Horizons yearbook, thus sealing their place in the annals of school history.
For Susan Caperna, yearbook adviser at Ridgeville Christian High School, Springboro, Ohio, having 23 students sign up to be on staff was unprecedented.
Frank Harbin, Walsworth sales representative in Alabama, has been integral in helping many of his schools increase the sale of yearbooks to seniors.
