Welcome to the Top Tips page at PressMasters! The main goal of PressMasters is to offer you, the reader, a way to make your own school paper a better paper to read overall. This includes the quality of the stories, the quality of the photography, improved editing, improved layout and design, and also making it look better coming off of the press. The following tips have been compilied from different sources who were all asked the same question...What tips would you give a school newspaper staff if you had the chance?

As of right now, the list is long and growing at a regular rate. At some point, the list will be divided into categories to make it a bit more manageable.

If you have any tips or pointers that you'd like to see added or any questions at all about this page or producing a school newspaper, please contact us at [email protected]

We will be happy to answer any questions you have. Now on to the list!

You Make The Call

Develop and exercise a sense for what constitutes news. Unless you live in an extremely small town, ribbon cutting ceremonies for local businesses belong in the chamber of commerce newsletter, not the newspaper. Accept news tips graciously, but never let anyone outside your newspaper dictate what belongs in it.

Wide Open Spaces.

If you leave too much space around the edges of your text, the paper will look as though it is just drifting around on the page. To avoid this, make sure you use a good grid sheet for what you are doing. Your printer can supply you with a set of these. This is an important step because if you have a one inch margin on your pages, when they go to press, there is going to be a TWO inch gap in the center. Yuck :P

W W W W W

The big five to include in every hard news story. If you miss one, somebody who reads the story will be asking questions and be left out in the cold. Who is involved? What are they doing? Why are they doing it?Where are they? When is it? Answer all of these in your story.

Using Jumps.

Jumps are a useful tool for getting the reader to go through the rest of the paper. If you have a story on the front page, it should jump to either an inside page or the back of the paper. You jump to the inside to draw the reader into the meat of the paper and hopefully into reading another story. You jump to the back of the paper to give the paper an easy way to find the rest of the story. They simply need to turn the paper over. In these two cases, there are differences in which stories jump inside and which jump to the back. News stories almost always jump to the back. Feature articles or sports articles nearly always jump inside.

Tight Tight Tight!!!

The very best looking papers contain NO white space at all. White space gives a newspaper an untidy and un- professional look. White space is simply the area of the newspaper that has nothing in it. The best way to avoid white space is simply to paste the ads up on the bottom of the page, and fill the remaining area with text and graphics and photos. This is why you write 10 inches of text for 9 inches of space. It guarantees that it won't run out before it hits the ad and leave white space.

Tell It To The Judge.

It is illegal to print the names of persons under 18 who have allegedly committed crimes. In all criminal cases, regardless of the person's age, he or she "allegedly" did whatever. Don't use your stories to convict people who are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Tape No-No's

At the printer, they use a special extra clear tape that won't disfigure or 'moray' any pictures you may have. This tape is very expensive and is NOT scotch tape. If you put tape anywhere on your paper, it can show up on the final printed copy. If you absolutely must use tape, make sure you never put it on anything that isn't solid black, and make sure you use as little as possible.

Stop. Drop. Roll.

Expect a certain amount of flak. Accept the fact that when you are doing your job correctly, not everyone is going to fall in love with the end result. Live with it. If you can't, find something else to do.

Sticky Situation

Remove any excess wax that you may have on the page, it shows up when you print the paper. Never reuse anything that is discolored or ratty around the edges.

Spel Cheker

As always, use the spell checker but be forewarned, they will not catch things like too, two, and to, so always have at least one other person read the story and edit it. Keep a dictionary handy (as well as a thesaurus) just in case.

Space Saver

Single space after punctuation marks. Double spacing eats room.

Sounds crazy...BUT...

Always know what date it is. Nothing looks much worse than picking up a newspaper and seeing that today is the 30th of February. Or worse that it's February 30, 1989. This may seem like a simple thing, but the small things add up, and put enough of them together and they can make a paper shine.

Sooooooo.....

When interviewing, ask primarily open-ended questions. You'll get the most and the best information.

Size Counts.

Any reseizing of your paper that the printers have to do will affect the quality of your paper. If you have the pages set up on a regular size sheet of paper and it needs to be enlarged, the dots in the photos will spread away from one another, and the imperfections in the fonts will become exaggerated. On the flip side, if the papers need to be reduced because they hang over the edges of the grid, the dots in the images will collapse and bleed into one another. This will turn the image into a big muddy mess.

Running the border.

All photos should have a taped border. Border tape is available at most stationary stores and if you are using Photoshop you can print the border directly on the photo when you print it out. The border tape frames the picture and sets it apart from the rest of the page.

Respect.

Part of your job is community liaison. If the person who had your job before you was unprofessional, key people are not going to want to talk to you or even give you a chance. But you have to stay with it and work for it. Similarly, if you are unprofessional, many people won't give your replacement the time of day. Respect that.

Repetitive Redundancies

Never use two words where one will work. Doing this saves space and readers. The reader who has to translate your story into something understandable, won't read the story at all.

Recycle, Reuse, Reduce?No way.

Always keep you content as fresh as possible. Never rerun stories or photographs. The only thing you should ever reuse is the mastheads and advertisements that will run again. If an ad begins to get yellow or waxy, throw it away. The quality on the press will suffer.

Rats.

Giving and/or accepting gifts from sources is, in almost every case imaginable, highly unethical.

Prove It.

Attribute everything. (According to ..., So-and-So said, "...., Joe Blow stated, "....)

P.C. Lives

Always use the currently politically correct terminology and be as non-offensive, non-racist, non-sexist, sensitive person you can be. An example of this is police officer, not policeman, or person who uses a wheelchair, instead of handicapped or disabled.

Ooooh...I'm Tellin'

As a journalist, you must expect the fact that people are going to lie to you. Don't be shocked and amazed. But if what you're hearing just doesn't jibe with your common sense, reframe your question and ask it again.

O I C

Learn shorthand or develop your own system. Be quick enough to avoid uneasy spaces in your interviews or chunks of your meeting going uncovered.

Numbers

Always make sure that you put the numbers in the right place. On a tab, the numbers can go either on the bottom or the top. If they are going on the top the even numbers go on the outside, or left side, of the page. Odd numbers should all go on the right of the page. The same is true for a standard or broad sheet, except that you cannot put the numbers on the bottom of the page.

Non-Photo Graphics-ClipArt

Use clip art sparingly. Clip art is best reserved for 'section' headers ie. "sports news" can have a few footballs next to it.Using clip art as an attachment to a story is not the best way to do it. You will achieve a more professional look if you just do without art if you don't have a photo.When you do use clip art in the paper make sure it is clean and balanced. The best clip art is either solid black or an out line drawing Most clip art grays will not come out as well as you think when they hit the press. The press is designed to handle halftones and solids and not much else. If you use an outline style, make sure that the lines in the art are at least as wide as the lines you use in your text. Otherwise they run the risk of disappearing on the press.

Neatness Counts.

Keeping your paper neat, even, and level, is the best few minutes you will ever spend. As you go along, make sure that you aren't overlapping something else, pasting up crooked, leaving a 1/4 inch of space to the left of one story and 1/2 inch on the other side. Making sure everything is even and level makes all the difference in the world when you print the paper.

Jump!!!

Always make sure that the 'jumps' work properly. A 'jump is when a story is broken into two pieces with one on one page and the second half deeper in the paper. The fastest way to make a reader put down a newspaper is to draw him into a story and tell him that the rest is on page 10 and the rest is actually nowhere to be found. They will never pick it up again.

I Feel...

You are merely covering the news. You are not the news. Unless you are doing a special feature piece, never make any references to yourself in your own stories.

Hi! It's Me Again...

Calling to double check a fact in your story beforehand is always preferable to having to run a correction and smooth over hurt feelings later.

He Said, She Said

After writing a person's name for the first time in the story, refer to the person from then on by the last name and the proper pronoun, alternately. (Ex., Smith, she, Smith, she.)

Halftones are a pain...

But they are a necessary part of printing a newspaper. Halftones are what we in the trade call the photographs in the paper. We call them this because they are just that. Half black and half white. They are the photographs you see that are really just a collection of different sized dots that when viewed from far away make up a picture. They are difficult to make look good, but with some practice and interaction with the printers and camera department people where you get the paper printed, you can make them an excellent addition to your paper instead of a bunch of black and white blobs in boxes.

Gossip Elsewhere

Contrary to popular belief, gossip has no place in a newspaper. Save it for the op-ed, or letters to the editor. Just because most school papers are printed in the tabloid format, doesn't mean that they have be supermarket tabloid trash.

Full House?

Make sure that you don't have any 'white space' on the page that shouldn't be 'white space'. If something is incomplete or has fallen off the page, you need to be on the lookout for it. If you let it go to press missing parts, it can be difficult to rectify at best. Simply give the page a quick once over for any white space that looks out of place. Question all empty spaces to make sure they are supposed to be empty and order some type of filler art for any spaces that are too large.

Folio Checks.

Make sure all of the datelines, by lines, titles, headers, and so on are all in place and have the right names, dates, and credits. This quick and simple check can save you a ton of embarrassment. Most folios will contain the date, the name of the paper and the page number.

Fight For Your Rights

Respect your sources. They are the hands that feed you. Conduct yourself professionally at all times.

Fess Up You....

Be direct, but avoid trying to trap a source into revealing something unseemly. Remember, loaded questions create hostile news sources.

F.A.C.T.

Fast, Accurate, Concise, True. Pretty much self explanatory. Keep your stories inside this easy to remember guideline, and you make a better story.

Double Check. Double Check.

Make sure and have two people check the page. The old saying "two heads are better than one" is most definitely true in an editorial setting. Double checking will almost always catch a few errors that were missed on the first pass. It improves the overall quality of the paper to have as few errors as possible.

Dot Gain.

Halftones all suffer from one thing. Dot gain. Dot gain happens on all presses and it is the reason that you sometimes come across a picture that looked ok when you pasted it up but looked horrible when it came off of the press. Here's what happens and how to fix it. What happens is that the pictures are made into halftones, if they aren't already halftones, and than they go onto a plate which goes onto the press. The plate has raised areas where things are to printed. On a halftone, these raised areas are dots. These areas are almost impossible to feel, but they are raised none the less. When these areas are covered with ink, they spread out. Sort of like pouring hot fudge on a sundae. If you put two scoops together, and cover them with fudge, the fudge touches in the middle. The same thing happens when dots are covered with ink. The ink touches in the middle. Dot gain. This can make the photo look very muddy and much darker than you expected.What can you do? Ask the printer approximately how much dot gain the press has and adjust the photo accordingly. If he says ten percent, start by adjusting the photo's to make them lighter. DO NOT: Use the brightness adjustments, or contrast adjustments in Photoshop. this will make the picture very flat and bland. DO: Use Photoshop to print the pictures in halftone and adjust the preferences of Photoshop's printing to lighten the pictures.Another strategy: Print a bunch of test pictures on one page if the printer isn't sure about how much dot gain there is. Print one picture at 90%, another at 80% and another at 75% (I wouldn't go any lower than that. Make sure that the pictures are about the same composition wise, and are stacked on top of one another if the paper is a standard format, and across the top of then page if it is a tab. Do this to make sure that the pictures are all getting the same amount of ink so you can make a good decision about where to make the future adjustments.

Come Armed

Bring a prepared set of questions to an interview whenever possible. Don't leave until you have asked all that you set out to ask. But interviews also have a life of their own. Be willing to digress a bit with your subject. You may uncover something totally unexpected.

Column Width

Column width is very important. If it is too narrow, you only get one or two words in each line, if it's too wide, it can dominate the page. Column width should be varied throughout the newspaper. On page should have four columns, the next five or six. It just breaks up the monotony. Some papers also vary column width on the same page. This can help separate stories on the same page that 'jump' to another page.

Color in the lines kiddies :)

Keep the copy in the lines on the grid sheets. Whoever is printing your paper should be able to supply you with the necessary grid sheets if you don't already have them. These sheets are made with blue lines that do not show up on the press and these lines are vital to the success of the printing. The lines show the limit of the actual area that the press can print. If you go out of the lines, you run the risk of losing whatever it is that's outside of the lines.

By Lines

Make sure not to hurt the feelings and pride of your co-newspeople. Check those by-lines. Make sure the photographer and author are correctly cited as being the author and photographer. Save yourself a lot of apologizing later.

Blue Skies (well...sky blue anyway)

Never write on the page with anything other than a sky blue marker that is made specifically for writing on pages. These markers are non-photogenic, and will not show up on the negatives that the printer will make of your pages. Anything written on the page has the chance of showing up on the final copy if it isn't done with one of these pens.

Be A Rock

To the greatest extent humanly possible, keep your politics and personal views out of your writing. Your job depends on your lack of bias.

Ads in the gutter...

The ads in your paper should always be laid out in the gutter first and than work towards the sides of the paper along the bottom of the page. This is how the pros do it and is also how you should o it. The eye is naturally drawn to the center, and having the smaller ads on the outside edges and the larger ads on the inside (gutter) draws the eye across the smaller ads to the larger ads in the center.

Ad Sales

When selling ads for your school paper, make sure that what they sell is acceptable for the paper. Sorry gang, no coupons for the quikeemart 40 oz. BargainBeer.Make sure that when you go to a prospective advertiser, you are well dressed and as polite and professional as you can be. When you are selling ads for your school, you are representing not only the paper, but the rest of the school as well.Be prepared. Nothing will kill a sale faster than if you don't have an answer to a question. Always know the rates and timetables and anything they may ask.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Avoid laundry listing. Even if you have to present a boatload of data, vary your sentence structure to convey the information in an interesting way to the reader.