Dave's(teacher) Description of the Structure of Making a Newspaper

Today, as well as having a meeting and organising work, Dave has also come in to talk to us about how the roles would work in an actual newspaper business. It is quite different to how we are structuring it but I think it would be too complex and take too long for us to re-make the same system.

He started by showing us the structure of making a newspaper and how it is different to how we will be doing it within our project. I have taken a picture of my notes which show the diagram that he drew to explain the system. It starts with the editor at the top, dept editor which is along side the art editor. Both of these roles are under the editor and they will be taking orders, as it were, from the editor. Below these roles are the production editor, who would make sure that everyone was doing their job efficiently(Kirks role within our project), the section editor and another section editor. The final role beneath these is the staff writer who would do most of the leg work throughout the process and be doing a lot of the writing.

Dave then went on to tell us about the folder system that a document for the newspaper would go through. The document would start of going into the 'Raw copy' folder after first being worked on, then into a folder called 'Sub copy' and it would then be sent to the art editor, into the 'To Art' folder. From art editor it would go into a folder called 'From Art', then to 'To Caption' folder, to the 'Final Check' folder and then it would be sent to editor for any final checks, which would go into the 'SEND' folder.

Finally, Dave decided to explain to us about the 'Flat Plan'. This is the structure that you should follow when making a newspaper, it shows each page, what is to be on each page and you cross off each page when it is completed. This plan should be classed a working deadline so that you can see what you need to do in each step of the process.

There are five deadlines that you need to consider when making a newspaper. The first one is the Flat Plan deadline; second is the resource check deadline, third is the copy deadline, fourth is the find deadline and the last deadline is the print deadline.