Being RIGHT is More Important than Being Pretty

Our senior issue came out on June 19 - the day of graduation rehearsal.

This is a HIGHLY anticipated release. I have people for weeks asking for copies, mainly because everyone wants to see where everyone else is going to college. I order almost double the number of copies of this issue than normal because people take five and six copies each once I put them on newsstands. I will never understand it.

This year, we decided to make the back page a tribute to teachers leaving or retiring from our school. The design my staffer wanted to use called for full-body cut-outs of some teachers, some parting words and an article.

We exported on June 16, the morning after a seven-hour work session. True confession: I was over it. And by "it," I mean everything. Over 100 students had yet to pick up their yearbooks, my grades weren't done, my room wasn't packed, my ASNE work... Well, you can see that I'm just writing my final blog post now. The last thing I wanted to do was spend more time on the senior issue, which in my mind, had always been fluff.

When we exported the paper, all I felt was relief. When we distributed and I didn't get any phone calls from angry parents or students, I felt relief. And then I saw a forwarded email from the former newspaper adviser. Relief was replaced with dread.

On the back page, discussing the retiring and leaving teachers, we left out the photo and interview for a teacher who had served our school system for 34 years and included a staff member who had only been at the school for one. The retiring teacher emailed my reporter, asking why she had been "snubbed."

I felt horrible (and I still do). I asked my designer what happened; long story short, had she cut out the background of this teacher's photo, it would have looked like her feet had been amputated and like she had been scalped. She made a judgement call based on design, rather than content.

It wasn't the right call.

I should have caught it, but I didn't. It wasn't even close to being on my radar. I still feel awful, but the only thing I can do (other than put extra photos and interviews online) is use it as a teachable moment for myself and my kids.

Design should NEVER dictate content, and every decision we make means something to someone, not matter how "fluffy" we might consider the work.

Erinn Harris
TJHSST
Alexandria, VA