Leadership & Team Building

One of the most important parts of journalism is ethical practices. As a senior, I decided to form a permanent Ethics and Legal Team for Carlmont's journalism program. Taking inspiration from one of our alumni, and our observations of mainstream media, we came up with several ways to promote ethical journalism in our publication and explore what that means. You can read more about our work in the Law and Ethics section of my portfolio.

I asked two of my peers - Oliver Fichte and Gabi Shore - to join me in founding the team. Another of our peers, Erik Cheng, joined us later in the year. We used resources from the previous unofficial ethics team and came up with a curriculum to teach our peers about ethical practices, then contacted our adviser about the idea.

In creating the team, I wanted to provide a safety net for our program in the event that anyone ran into ethical dilemmas. Since our program is so large, there are bound to be at least a few ethical issues, and we wanted to ensure that nobody was alone in dealing with them. I have dealt with a few ethics questions myself, and wanted to give others the same support I received when handling them.

As a team, we wanted to help our staff hold ourselves accountable for our actions and ensure that our publication remains a shining beacon of responsible journalism in our community.

Two of our members were juniors, and two of us were seniors. As the older members of the team, Fichte and I took on a senior project to focus our attention on building up our presence. We delegated tasks and planned out our course of action for the year, then facilitated a peaceful transition of power to Shore and Cheng at the end of the year.

When I was a junior, a friend of mine began Belmont News, a youth-run city publication. I joined as an events editor on the editorial board, and stayed there for a year. In the spring, I applied for the position of Editor-in-Chief, and was accepted. I spent the summer working to expand the publication. I created a cartoons section, expanded our opinions section, and recruited new editors and managing editors. I continued this administrative work throughout the year, before passing the publication and any relevant materials on to our new Editor-in-Chief, Emma Yin.

I was a Highlander editor for two years, as a junior and a senior. During this time, I worked on six issues of the magazine, across several sections. I have managed groups of writers by helping them complete their articles, editing said articles, and working to design their pages and spreads in the magazine. The design process included creating art and planning layouts with each writer.

I have taken the lead on designing some pages on my own, and you can view them in the design section of my portfolio.

In addition to my editorial responsibilities, I also took on a few extra tasks. I wrote an editorial for the fifth issue of volume 14, helped plan covers, and provided insight to less experienced editors, among other things.