The Mycenaean

The Mycenaean produces a lot of content every week, some being in the form of articles — posted on the website — or in the form of videos or instagram reels.

The first step of writing an article can be the hardest part sometimes — simply coming up with an idea of something to write about. For example, I’m also in the process of writing an article about Advisory. It took me a bit of time while working on other Mycenaean projects to come up with that idea.

Once the idea is on the spreadsheet, it is “claimed,” and you’re free to start writing about it.

The main part of newspaper — aside from typing — is getting  interviews with other students or staff members. The next step after getting a basic format of the article is to write questions for people.

The questions should be easy enough for people to answer on the spot, but not so easy that they answer with one word. I format my questions to where it’s almost difficult to answer with one word.

Sometimes one word questions are what you want, but you still need details. There’s any easy way to fix this issue, with one word added to the end of the question. Why?

There are a few ways to interview people as well. Sometimes it’s easier to just send an email and have the person respond rather than going to get them. Many people record their interviews on voice memos and then transcribe them later, but I just have the person type their answers, which I feel is less intimidating sometimes.

Another issue can come up in the interview process: You may not have anyone to interview. Easy fix here. Our social media coordinator can post a poll on the topic on our social media and then look at who responded to choose some promising people and get to interviewing.

After interviews are done, it’s time to start writing. The best way I’ve found to format articles is to have a few paragraphs of introduction then start with quotes.

You also don’t want back to back to back quotes, add some “fluff” — as we call it — to break up the quotes.

Once the article has been fully written and proofread by the staff writer, it goes forward in the process to that staff writer’s assigned editor.

The editor will read the article, and then suggest or make comments with edits that the staff writer should make. These edits could range from grammar mistakes to completely changing a portion of the article.

Once this has been done, the article will be returned to the staff writer for the edits to be fixed.

Finally, once the edits on the article have been fixed, then the article will go to Mr. Broer for his edits. Only once those are fixed will the article be posted.

Writing for the newspaper is a fun and interesting way to express your ideas, and fosters a collaborative environment for students to work together to produce great content for the school.