Student Editorial Board Newsletter: How Student Editors Lead the Newsroom

Student editorial boards run the newsroom. When they function well, the publication produces consistent, quality journalism. When they function poorly, deadlines slip, reporters lose confidence, and the advisor ends up doing editorial work the students should be doing. Clear communication about roles and responsibilities at the start of the year is the most effective investment in making the board work.

Defining the editorial structure

The newsletter or orientation document should lay out the full editorial structure: every role, what it owns, and how it connects to other roles. An org chart alongside written descriptions helps editors visualize who they report to and who reports to them.

Be specific about decision-making authority. A section editor who does not know whether they can reject a story without consulting the managing editor will default to asking, which creates bottlenecks. Clear scope prevents that.

Editor-in-chief responsibilities

The editor-in-chief role deserves its own section. It is the most complex student leadership position in the publication and the one most likely to be misunderstood. Include what the EIC owns outright (publication direction, final editorial decisions, staff culture), what they coordinate on (section coverage plans, design decisions), and what they do not own (individual story quality, which is each section editor's job).

Also include how the EIC relates to the advisor. Students who have never held a leadership role often either defer everything to the advisor or resist all advisor input. A clear description of the collaborative relationship prevents both extremes.

Section editor responsibilities

Each section editor needs a description of their beat coverage expectations, their reporter management responsibilities, and their role in the editing process. A news editor who knows they are responsible for assigning, editing, and verifying every story in their section approaches the job differently than one who thinks editing means reading for grammar.

Editorial meeting structure

Describe how editorial meetings work: how often they happen, who attends, what the agenda covers, and what decisions get made versus deferred. Editorial boards that have structured, consistent meetings make better decisions than those that meet when things need to get resolved.

Handling editorial disagreements

Disagreements about coverage, framing, and story decisions are normal in a newsroom. Communicate the process for resolving them: who gets a vote, who has final say, and what happens when an editor and a reporter are in conflict over a story. Students who have a process to fall back on during disagreements resolve them more cleanly than those who escalate every conflict to the advisor.