Process
From creating a spreadsheet that tracks every step of the publishing process to final checklists to team bonding activities, my biggest impact on Portrait has been improving the process for creating each paper.
Katie's Grand Plan
In my first cycle as Editor-in-Chief, I created this spreadsheet to try to track every single step of each story as an attempt to be better informed about the overall well-being of the paper throughout the cycle. The different colors represent different jobs responsible for completing each section (blue means writer, orange is photographer, green is designer, and red was procedural items/editors).
Katie's GrandER Plan
After a couple of cycles using the Grand Plan, it was clear that some tweaking was needed. I created Katie's GrandER Plan to be more user-friendly, and to incorporate new components of our publishing process, such as word counts, advocates, and check-ins. I also removed a lot of the checklist items for designers because they were redundant.
Katie's GrandEST Plan
At the beginning of this year, I sat down with my other editors and created my grandEST plan. The biggest changes here were just updating it to this years expectations and staff's needs.
Checklists
As you may have guessed based on my Grand Plans, I love checklists. I added several final check lists to ensure both consistency and a streamlined process for finishing the paper each cycle.
Design Final Checks
This was originally made for me as a design editor to make sure all parts of each page were done and edited, but as I trained new designers, I also taught them to do this. Now, my final checks are much quicker and can focus on the big picture of the designs rather than the little details, because my designers have already taken care of them.
Deadline night
This spreadsheet, color-coded to match the Grand Plan, covers everything that must be done on deadline night. Darker colors indicate an editor must check off, and once everything left of the black vertical line has been completed, the writer for the story's job is done and they can go home. This has helped give people something to work toward and has made deadline nights much more productive.
Portrait Culture
I have put significant effort into fostering a creative and fun culture in Portrait, and this starts with my daily beginning-of-class slides.
I started Staff Member of the Day, which highlights a different staff member each day for an accomplishment in their life, whether or not it is Portrait-related.
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I also added a daily fun fact. It might sound small and silly, but this has greatly increased engagement in class. On Mondays, the fun fact is forgone for a weekend share, where we circle up and tell everyone about one aspect of our weekends. Getting a chance to laugh and come together every week has been really beneficial.
Every December, we have a dead week before winter break. I created Portrait Winter Games to fit into that week.
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Teams are randomly assigned, and the competition is twofold: Just Dance battles and quizzes with fun facts about staff members.
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This has been the most successful team bonding I've ever done, and it has continued and evolved over several years.