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Home is where Prep News is! PN gets it done despite difficulties from COVID-19

This paper, the very one in your hand, from the masthead’s wet ink all the way to the end credits, is itself the result of countless hours of hard work. Every week, the editors and staff members of the Prep News work diligently to write, prepare, edit, re-edit, and re-re-edit the paper, and it’s been a time honored tradition for decades.

2020, though, has been the year of broken traditions.

Two weeks ago, with the PN moderator in COVID quarantine, the team was forced to abandon the poster-plastered walls of their J-wing room and spend Tuesday night in front of a screen. Scattered across the city, far away from the fancy technology of the art wing’s computers, the Prep News staff faced the difficult task of producing a hard copy of the paper totally from home, something no other group has ever had to do.  

The typical process of paper production includes a significant level of scrutiny. Articles are sent back and forth between staff members and moderator Steve Missey, who oversees final edits, all while editors collaborate over computers to lay out the text and images. It can be a frenzying process at times, and definitely not an easy one to virtualize, given the close contact and collaboration required for production. Despite these glaring obstacles, though, editor in chief Carter Fortman, motivated by tradition, worked hard to develop a way around the barriers.

“We started the year with the plan to continue our weekly tradition of making the paper, that was our goal. We knew that Covid presented a challenge, though,” said Fortman. “ It was really a challenging time but our staff came together, because we wanted to keep the tradition of the Prep News alive.”

The first step towards an at home paper was getting access to InDesign, the software used to lay out the paper each week. Fortman was able to get computers from the IT Department that had InDesign on them, though it was an older version, which presented challenges in itself.

“It took me a while to figure out the old version of InDesign, especially because I was new to layout. But I think I was able to overcome it pretty well,” said Noah Appril-Sokol, fellow news editor.

On top of different technology, the already small staff was down a man, as features editor Sam Tarter was spending the week recovering from surgery.

“I already knew that I was going to be out, and I felt bad that I couldn’t help out more,” said Tarter. “Waking up from surgery, my phone was blasting with messages from the group chat, so knowing that the guys were working hard and even had time to check up on me meant a lot. The get well soon message on page eight was really heartwarming.”

Once the laptops were obtained and distributed to editors, they spent the night organizing each page and overseeing, via text message, staff members who made changes to articles, wrote headlines, and, of course, compiled the infamous Prep News credits. Missey, for his part, exchanged his mighty purple pen for an Apple pencil, and took to reviewing entire pages of the paper on Notability as they were sent to him throughout the night 

“It was fun. It was the very first time I had used an apple pencil, although, I think (Fortman) reported that the pencil on glass made my handwriting even worse,” joked Missey.

In the end, after heavy use of the Prep News GroupMe, the paper came together and although it came a week late, it was still a massive success for the small but dedicated staff.

“We were able to pull it off, and even though we did lose a week that the paper would have been otherwise produced, it was still a decent paper,” reflected Fortman.

“I think that the online paper really shows our dedication and love of writing for the Prep News,” said Jack Figge, core staff member.

Although the streak of weekly papers was lost, something more important was gained by last week’s at home paper, something hard to come by this year: connection.

“We’re isolated, we’re split up by cohorts and teachers are not really hanging out in (their) offices, we’re going to meetings over Zoom.” said Missey. “The community needs a newspaper, it needs to know what’s going on, to give ourselves a sense of ourselves as a community.”

 

 

 


 

 

 

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Prep News – the weekly student-run newspaper of St. Louis U. High
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No material may be reprinted without the permission of the editors and the moderator.