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Write a Newspaper
Writing a newspaper is a lot of work, but it can be fun, too. Seeing the way people react to your articles, having your name in print, and exposing injustices other publications have yet to write about are just some of the benefits of writing a newspaper.
Steps
Get together a group of friends to help you. Putting together a newspaper by yourself is no fun. You may want to assign people certain tasks. Common tasks to assign would be staff writer (they write the articles and can take pictures, if they want to), editors to lay out the paper, copyeditors who correct grammar and spelling (layout editors can do this, too), a business manager to deal with financial issues, and a visuals coordinator to take pictures (every article should have a picture).
Collect the articles you want to put in your newspaper and any pictures that go with them. You can have the copy editors check for mistakes at this point, or you can do it after the articles are put together on the paper. Do it now if you can get your staff writers to correct their mistakes.
Understand that putting a newspaper together is called layout, or pasteup. It is called pasteup because it used to be done using X-acto knives, paste, and sheets of paper with columns on it. Today, most people prefer to layout a newspaper on a computer. Choose a program such as Adobe PageMaker to help you lay out the paper. You can use programs such as Adobe Photoshop, or Photo Deluxe for pictures.
Buy a printing machine or find a printer to print your paper. Printing machines can be very expensive and take up a lot of space, so if your paper is going to have a small circulation you probably would not want to invest in one, at least not early on. To find a printer, you could ask any other small, independent local papers in your area who prints theirs. To cover the cost of printing, you can raise money through selling ad space to business, through subscriptions, through selling individual papers, or any combination of the above.
Remember that a paper must have categories. Otherwise, it will just be a big jumble. When you have categories, not only is it easier to read, but it will also impress the reader. Have categories like the sports page, the style (humor) page, the editorial, etc.
Distribute the paper when everything is done. Enjoy the fruits of your labor!
Tips
If you scan in pictures that have already been printed,and they have funny lines on them, use "remove dust" in Photo Deluxe (or a similar command in a similar program) to remedy this problem.
Make sure everyone knows what his/her task is and completes that task. Keep your newsroom as organized as possible--when you're trying to go to press it is very stressful when you can't find what you need!
Use computers that are reliable and from this century to lay out your paper or else save your work often (a good idea regardless of what kind of computer you have).
Check eBay or other online shops for inexpensive or used software. Adobe InDesign CS or PageMaker, are for layout and output, Photoshop or Corel Photopaint are resizing and color-correcting photos, Microsoft Word or Wordperfect are word-processing and Adobe Acrobat Professional if for fine tuning PDF documents used by most printing shops today.
OR, download OpenOffice for wordprocessing, Scribus for layout and GIMP for photoediting; all these are free opensource software that you can use to put your paper together and are for many operating systems like Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix more and can do most of what the expensive software can do.
Upgrade your computer to handle graphics. Low RAM and slow processor just won't cut it.
Sell your newspaper for a reasonable price. Or even give it for free.
Warnings
Layout can be extremely frustrating when you're trying to make the articles fit exactly right.
PageMaker can be a huge pain sometimes, so if you can find a better program at a cheap price, use it.
Steps
Get together a group of friends to help you. Putting together a newspaper by yourself is no fun. You may want to assign people certain tasks. Common tasks to assign would be staff writer (they write the articles and can take pictures, if they want to), editors to lay out the paper, copyeditors who correct grammar and spelling (layout editors can do this, too), a business manager to deal with financial issues, and a visuals coordinator to take pictures (every article should have a picture).
Collect the articles you want to put in your newspaper and any pictures that go with them. You can have the copy editors check for mistakes at this point, or you can do it after the articles are put together on the paper. Do it now if you can get your staff writers to correct their mistakes.
Understand that putting a newspaper together is called layout, or pasteup. It is called pasteup because it used to be done using X-acto knives, paste, and sheets of paper with columns on it. Today, most people prefer to layout a newspaper on a computer. Choose a program such as Adobe PageMaker to help you lay out the paper. You can use programs such as Adobe Photoshop, or Photo Deluxe for pictures.
Buy a printing machine or find a printer to print your paper. Printing machines can be very expensive and take up a lot of space, so if your paper is going to have a small circulation you probably would not want to invest in one, at least not early on. To find a printer, you could ask any other small, independent local papers in your area who prints theirs. To cover the cost of printing, you can raise money through selling ad space to business, through subscriptions, through selling individual papers, or any combination of the above.
Remember that a paper must have categories. Otherwise, it will just be a big jumble. When you have categories, not only is it easier to read, but it will also impress the reader. Have categories like the sports page, the style (humor) page, the editorial, etc.
Distribute the paper when everything is done. Enjoy the fruits of your labor!
Tips
If you scan in pictures that have already been printed,and they have funny lines on them, use "remove dust" in Photo Deluxe (or a similar command in a similar program) to remedy this problem.
Make sure everyone knows what his/her task is and completes that task. Keep your newsroom as organized as possible--when you're trying to go to press it is very stressful when you can't find what you need!
Use computers that are reliable and from this century to lay out your paper or else save your work often (a good idea regardless of what kind of computer you have).
Check eBay or other online shops for inexpensive or used software. Adobe InDesign CS or PageMaker, are for layout and output, Photoshop or Corel Photopaint are resizing and color-correcting photos, Microsoft Word or Wordperfect are word-processing and Adobe Acrobat Professional if for fine tuning PDF documents used by most printing shops today.
OR, download OpenOffice for wordprocessing, Scribus for layout and GIMP for photoediting; all these are free opensource software that you can use to put your paper together and are for many operating systems like Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix more and can do most of what the expensive software can do.
Upgrade your computer to handle graphics. Low RAM and slow processor just won't cut it.
Sell your newspaper for a reasonable price. Or even give it for free.
Warnings
Layout can be extremely frustrating when you're trying to make the articles fit exactly right.
PageMaker can be a huge pain sometimes, so if you can find a better program at a cheap price, use it.