The Wingspan newspaper staff has decided, after 17 years of printing a seven issue, eight-page broadsheet style newspaper, to switch to a more reader-friendly news magazine.
The first issue of the Wingspan was produced in 1982 under then adviser Mary Ellen O’Shields. The first issue was produced as a tabloid style newspaper until Martin Johnson, the 1996 editor-in-chief, decided to produce a more professional broadsheet style newspaper.
English teacher Brenda Gorsuch began advising the Wingspan in her first year at West, 1982-1983.
“It was the first high school newspaper in North Carolina to change to the broadsheet format, which is the professional newspaper size,” Gorsuch said. “We’ve been that for 17 years. All the research has shown that today’s young readers don’t relate to traditional newspapers because they don’t have them in their homes anymore, but they do relate well to publications they pick up at Starbucks. So the motivation was to try to meet the needs of our students by moving to a more appropriate reading format.”
This year’s editor-in-chiefs were more wary to make the switch since they’ve won so many awards as a broadsheet, but decided to keep up with the times.
“When I went to the journalism convention in Chapel Hill, I saw many of the other schools were making the switch to keep up with the times, and I thought the regular newspaper was becoming cumbersome and outdated,” editor-in-chief Lauren Stepp said. “This is also my senior year and journalism has done a lot for me during my high school career, so I wanted to make history at West. I think we are doing that.”
The editor-in-chiefs knew that the change in format would require a total redesign.
“It’s definitely been overwhelming, and it was a lot more of a work load than I was expecting it to be. Some days I’m in here all day working,” Stepp said. “Although, in the end, when I get my copy of the magazine, I know that it will all be worth it. We do have to make 24 pages, but the pages are smaller, so it’s like the same amount of writing to a certain degree.”
The staff knew that a magazine would require different marketing techniques in selling ads and that it would be more costly to produce. They called on Paula Burke Roberts, the managing editor of the 1982 Wingspan staff, who now sells advertising for The Lightning, to help them with an advertising campaign.
“You’ll notice that our ads are a lot different and Sierra (Fender) worked a lot harder making those than I think we did last year,” editor-in-chief Anna Yarbrough said. “It’s not a lot of extra work that we weren’t expecting; it’s that we’re working on something different.”
The staff is nervous to see how the students and faculty react to the new magazine format. The first issue will be distributed in early December.
“I hope they’ll be like, ‘Wow,’” Gorsuch said. “‘This is different, this is cool, there’s cool stuff in here.’ I’m hoping there will be a strong reaction. We’re also putting our publication out into the community, so I’m hoping to get a lot of response from people in the community.”
By Katie Miller
