Providing feedback QT59
Guideline:
Editors should conduct relationships with staff members in a fair and professional manner. By considering the program’s best interests above matters of personality, students will be able to work together in a positive and productive environment.
Social media post/question:
How can peer coaching may help staffers build positive relationships.
Stance:
Teaching students work together is paramount to building the teamwork aspect of student media. By implementing coaching, editors empower staffers by further owning their work.
Reasoning/suggestions:
Coaching asks journalists to use the skills they already know. In The Coaching Way, Chip Scanlon writes, “It’s valuable as well because it draws on two basic skills you as a journalist already possess: the ability to ask good questions and the ability to listen to the answers.”
By asking the editor to approach the story as a reader, Scanlon adds the editor must listen and have empathy. “The ability to identify with another person’s point of view and to communicate that understanding. It requires a range of other skills and qualities, too, such as flexibility, confidence, a willingness to experiment, a keen awareness of another’s situation, and a genuine desire to help someone else achieve his or her goals.” Using this in a student media also empowers the staffer and requires the editor not to take charge.
Scanlon addresses the benefits of coaching and shows the importance of learning:
“1. To make use of the knowledge and experience of the writer.
- To give the writer primary responsibility for the story.
- To provide an environment in which the writer can do the best possible job.
- To train the writer, so that editing will be unnecessary.”
By implementing this approach to editing, staffers should improve and editors can better question the content in the story.
Resources:
The Coaching Way, Chip Scanlon, Poynter (More resources at the bottom of the article)