Going behind the scenes of the WSS

The West Side Story is an award winning Newspaper for entertainment about West high school. The WSS does a numerous amount of fun stories and great photos, but think about how they gather information to have us engaged in a unique newspaper. Well, the WSS alone has over 60 people people on staff creating the news we read.

Think about this, how long do you think it takes to gather ideas, do interviews, write, edit and publish the newspaper? It takes a couple of weeks, to be exact, it takes between four and six weeks to put the whole edition together. There seems to be a lot of work going on behind the scenes of the WSS.

The WSS has two Co-editor-in-chief, Kelsey Keranen(grad date) and Sharon Xiang(grad date). During an interview, (via email)* were asked a few questions regarding the WSS, via email.

A: What specifically is your job on the WSS?

Sharon: I am the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the WSS.

A: what made you decide to be on the WSS?

S: I decided to be on staff because I read the paper in junior high, and I really wanted to be apart of the staff that created such a wonderful publication.

According to kelsey Keranen, to be apart of the WSS there are requirements, you have to had taken Intro to journalism class first. “However, the WSS has some people who are exceptionally very good in working with the designing part of the WSS and did not have to take Intro to Journalism prior to joining staff on the news paper.” Keranen says.  In terms of working on the WSS, there is a process for choosing the best stories to be in the WSS. In an interview with Cameron Cook, 17’ Cook was asked some questions regarding her job as the feature editor. Cook is in charge of going through the story ideas and choosing the best stories which then goes to the EIC (editor in chief). Cook makes sure that everybody is working as a community to cooperate together with the newspaper.

The WSS has many people contributing to write the newspaper to make it a great material to read, and to obtain reading entertainment. To make the paper as best as the staff can , they have work nights. Almost every Wednesday after school the staff works on their stories, editing photos and communicating with each other in order to make the newspaper as entertaining as possible.