Using Google Docs with High School Journalism Publications

Google Docs is a great online program to help organize stories, deadlines and more for your staffs. It’s also a great tool that is a must have for online newsrooms.

This video helps explain what Google Docs is. In essence, it’s an online version of Microsoft Word. It’s applicable for scholastic journalism because students can type stories or copy and paste them into a google doc when they get done. Then they can share them with the staff copy team and/or editors. Those editors can then edit the stories from school, home, the library or anywhere else they can get internet access. It doesn’t confine the editing process to the school walls. This can significantly help move stories through the editing process more quickly. In addition, if students are using Google Docs, the excuse “I left my story at home.” (which translated means “I didn’t get it done.”) can’t get used as much because as long as students have internet access at home, they can upload the story to Google Docs at anytime.

There are some great resources out there to learn more about Google Docs and many staffs have been using it for years now to organize their content and keep staffers informed. It can be used for a variety of other things also ranging from displaying a page ladder for everyone to see who is working on what page, all the way to creating a spreadsheet for photographers of who is shooting what assignment.

Those are just a few of the uses. How are you using Google Docs? Add to the discussion below.

Aaron Manfull

Aaron is in his 26th year of advising student media. He is currently the Director of Student Media at Francis Howell North High School in St. Charles, Missouri. He is the Journalism Education Association Digital Media Chair and co-Director of Media Now. He is the 2023 JEA Teacher Inspiration Award Winner and is a former Dow Jones News Fund National Journalism Teacher of the Year. He is one of the authors of the textbook "Student Journalism and Media Literacy." You can find him on X and Instagram @manfull. He's a proud father. A transplanted Iowan. And an avid Hawkeye Fan.

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