Roaring Bengals is a student-led newspaper website meant to be the voice of Fuquay Varina High School. Since the newspaper is student-led, it is obvious that no one wrote anything over their hard-earned winter break.
But what actually goes into the articles we write on Roaring Bengals?
The Roaring Bengals has four article sections with one editor managing each section. Each section consists of four to five writers, among them is a section editor who helps keep the section on track with current events and article assignments. While there are section editors, who edit all the articles that come out of their section, there are also copy editors.
Copy editors are essentially the leaders of the editing process. An article cannot be finalized until it is filtered through the copy editors and then through our lovely newspaper adviser Kelly Prestipino, who ensures everything is perfect for finalization. The articles then go to website managers, which are called the layout editors. Then they are published on the website for public viewing.
The writing and editing process takes about a week. The staff as a group needs to decide on what topics to write about, assign those topics to a writer and then write the articles. Then the articles need to go through both the section and copy editors before going to Prestipino for final adjustments.
Newspaper staff also includes photographers who work to get the right photo for the articles the writers are producing weekly. There is a photo request board made each week, and the writer has to submit their own request for their article. Oftentimes, the photographers are required to attend after school activities such as sports games or club meetings to take these photos.
This is why publishing articles for the viewers takes a good amount of time. It is a team effort and requires a lot of insight and overview before being released to the public. The newspaper team tries their best to get articles out in a timely manner, but sometimes there are complications with edits, photos, or the website. There is a lot more that goes into the newspaper than just writing the article.
