Arizona Republic Tour

Participants in the 2011 ASNE Reynolds High School Journalism Institute at ASU toured the offices of the Arizona Republic on Friday, June 17. Highlights included a look at the recently merged newsroom operations (12News television station and Republic Media), where the television, website, and newspaper staffs freely share content with each other. The group also attended the daily 11 a.m. planning meeting, when the newspaper's A1 page editor meets with section editors and plans the front page for the edition to be printed the morning after tomorrow. The short meeting served as an excellent model for the journalism educators, many of whom routinely stage similar planning meetings involving their teenage staff members. Although high school journalism staff meetings typically take place early in the planning process (as brainstorming sessions), the Arizona Republic meeting showed that a get-together late in the planning process can also be valuable, prior to making the final layout plans for the upcoming issue to be published.

Jeff Richards
Grand County High School
Moab, Utah