The Westwind  – 11-4-2017

On Instagram – the_westwind

On Twitter – @awwestwind

On Facebook – ArvadaWestwind

Adviser – Ellie Norwood

Arvada West High School, 11595 Allendale Dr., Arvada, CO 80004

Students on Staff: 17

Mission Statement: The Westwind is dedicated to providing the Arvada West community with an honest, entertaining, extensive, and precise production. High quality and integrity are our top priorities in order to fulfill the public trust and expectations. We seek the truth and strive to respect diversity.

Coverage Philosophy: The 5 returning staffers are mostly editors and assist new staffers with training and editing. These editors each handle a class period where they train in their area of expertise: photography, sports, features, etc.  All staff work on coverage once trained. At that point, we rotate traditional, longer stories, such as features, with social media coverage, and the class is split so that there is constant coverage on all platforms. In addition to using Facebook for event updates and teasers, we try to use Facebook for our Spirits in the Wind coverage, modeled after Humans of New York. The other social media platforms are used as well, but in a more traditional sense as dictated by each medium.

Using Varied Media Platforms: We have our school announcements where we can place teasers when; we use polls and surveys; we brainstorm topics and use the elements of consideration for stories with our audience/community in mind.

Fun Things: Design T-shirts, J-day, food days, weekly oral news quizzes.

Getting the Year Off to a Good Start: I have them interview me about the class rules and guidelines, since, as journalists, this will be their goal.