Michael Garcia is editor and publisher of Weekly News at Corpus Christi Catholic School in Tampa, Florida
My grandson Michael explains the contents of a page of his Weekly News to me.
I am fascinated by the fun content that my grandson Michael Garcia and his team come up with for their creation, Weekly News (there was even a Valentine's edition recently and I love how the lead story is about Tornado Boy not having a date. To get reader engagement, the editor asks: Who is Tornado Boy's Date? You Decide).
There is also a page of Games (Valentine's Maze), or Word Search. The News Page comes late in the package---credits ABC News as a source--and includes an item about Crazy Weather, Animal Cameras at Busch Gardens and Powerball lottery with a $450 million jackpot (does that tell us something about what middle school kids are interested in?).
There is Sports (of course), and a favorite of mine, a Random Stuff page where readers can learn "how to draw a computer". I am thinking of that name and wondering the number of editors I know who have spent weeks coming up for a name for a section that was not as direct and fun as this one.
But, for me, the two highlights are the Jokes Page (What do you call sad coffee? Despresso), and a riot of a Horoscope Page (Piscis--It's mostly A's-It's your lucky day, or at least soon it will be).
"The newspaper is very popular and students wait for it, " an excited Michael tells me. "In fact, it is so popular that now there are copycats doing a similar newspaper in the school, but it is not the same."
Parents of other students relate the excitement that their children experience when Weekly News is published.
What next for Weekly News, I asked Michael.
"Advertising," he said. "We want to sell the back page, and maybe other pages too."
I am proud of Michael and his crew. Keep it up. Your readers need you!
Best hidden message; this newspaper is "printed". It is actually handwritten on lined notebook paper, but there is the presence of a grid, and an economical one at that. It is all black and white and it is the content that makes it successful (which I hear from the adults Weekly News definitely is).
Interesting fact: There were no misspelled words in any of the two entire editions I reviewed. That is an accomplishment.
Print lives with the next generation, the one that will come way behind those Millennials ! Time to raise that glass of bubbly.
Quartz Africa to launch in June
Quartz, Atlantic Media’s digital global business news brand, will launch Quartz Africa this June with region-specific content and targeted native ads. Quartz, with founding partner GE, plans to provide both global and Africa-specific business news coverage to readers of the Quartz Africa site.
More than 40% of Quartz’s readers are from outside the US and in just over two years, the site has attracted more than 100,000 monthly unique users from Africa. Following its successful launch in June 2014, Quartz India has expanded to reach more than 1.3 million readers monthly, growing more than 500% in just eight months.
