The goal I had for our news organization when I started as an Editor-in-Chief and still carry out is to work together as a team because I believe it is the foundation for being able to work as a functional whole. In my experience of being on the Na Pueo team for 2 years, I can say that working as a team is so important because of knowing that you are always able to ask for someone else’s input on certain concepts, which allows us to target our audience if we have multiple perspectives on decisions that we make as a team. I found that before going to the advisor for help in areas that I usually get stuck in, it was most beneficial to ask the team what they thought of my work first and get their input followed by making the changes they suggest. Then, going to the advisor would be easier since you’ve already got perspective on that certain issue, which adds more angles that you could review and analyze to gauge whether you are going to create impact with your contact. I think that the idea of having multiple perspectives, in general, is something very important to remember for all of us as a team and that there's always someone to lean on. Getting input from others is something I find to be part of the whole concept in journalism since it’s about covering stories from multiple angles while seeking the truth. In the process of journalism, it’s just as important to gain multiple angles, especially when you are stuck, as it is to cover multiple angles.

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Intending to act on these improvements to Na Pueo and its contributions to the journalism community, the following are goals that I have made for Na Pueo to improve audience engagement that is slowly in the works currently:

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There can be more online stories going out at the same time as preparing sections for each issue, asking students more about what they want to read about in addition to the news that has already happened, and adding an advertisement section to the print edition of the paper.

 

I noticed last year that while editors were getting their layouts done and were trying to get stories onto their pages, staff writers had a 2-week break from writing stories and tried to complete their choice menu for the quarter if they hadn’t already finished. However, this year, while trying to complete a "choice menu" at the same time as the editors are working on the layout of the newspaper, story pitches can be going on at the very minimum, and starting to work on new stories could be happening at the maximum. This way, more input can be reached from the student body more frequently and they'll be able to voice what they'd like to know more about. With this method, I envisioned getting out even more stories than we did last year, and our consistency with trying to post online weekly be more clear if there wasn’t this break between layout for editors and the next issue. I also think this will get the staff writers to be working almost at the same pace as editors working on the layout since both groups will constantly have something to do to allow Na Pueo to move forward. 

 

This year, we've been asking students more frequently through social media and our website about the types of stories they’d like to be reading about in the upcoming issues besides looking at events/news-worthy ideas that have already happened. This has been done using the poll feature that has given us as a team an immense amount of feedback. This helps our story pitching process because then we’ll have more insight as to what students are interested in at that moment in time, kind of like what is trending so that we can try to align it with what to look out for in the coming weeks for story ideas as well as still looking at events that have happened recently. For example, if Na Pueo puts a poll on Instagram of whether students want to read about shopping or clubs and they pick clubs, we as a journalism class will know before that certain story-pitching session that is coming up to look for any club-related events that Na Pueo could write about. Another option could be that during story-pitching sessions, our team can research/think about any club-related events that have happened in the past few weeks that students may not be aware of.

 

We are in the planning stages for each print edition/issue of Na Pueo to have a section in the paper for advertising within Mid-Pacific. This could consist of clubs wanting to advertise joining them or any events they may want the school to know about, the Mid-Pacific School of the Arts (MPSA - art, dance, music, theatre, etc.) could want to advertise upcoming shows or productions, or certain sports within Mid-Pacific might want to get the word out about a game that students can go watch on their free time. I think this would be a good communication method for different departments at school and will also give the impression upon students that they can always rely on Na Pueo, in addition to giving them the latest news in the form of stories, to provide short and timely announcements.