Guide to Coverage
THERE’S MORE TO THE STORY
A GUIDE TO COVERAGE THAT MAKES YOUR BOOK FRESH EACH YEAR.
MORE LOCALIZED
Tell the unique story of your school and the community. Be sure to include the topics that anchor you in your area and that show how and why you’re different than other schools in other towns in other parts of the country.
MORE VOICES
Give as many students as possible a chance to comment. Displays of quotes and longer first-person essays provide the opportunity for literally hundreds of students to be included in the book.
MORE PERSONAL
Find students with interesting tales of achievement, unusual experiences or typical life situations. Often a full spread, the key to strong profiles is a great interview, a compelling story, and exceptionally well-written copy.
MORE ISSUES
If it is important to your readers, put it in the book. Responsible coverage of issues includes research, balanced reporting and a local or humanized approach that ties the story to your school.
FONT IDEAS
Look for ideas that are different from what you have done in every other book and stretch your coverage by brainstorming harder at book planning time.
MORE JUMPS
Decide when it makes sense to have a topic expand onto a second or third spread and let the content dictate coverage. If the story is “bigger” than one spread, give it more than one spread.
MORE SEGMENTS
Who says that the sports section has to be all coverage of teams and their seasons? You might decide to add any number of new sports segments.
MORE SECTIONS
If it seems logical that an events or features section makes your story complete, include that section in your book. There’s no rule that says you must divide coverage into the same sections every year.
MORE ANALYSIS
If your theme or concept dictates some pattern other than standard sections, feel free to revise. Changing the number and order of sections in your book makes it new for the readers each year.
MORE OPTIONS
Modular design can help you make the most of secondary coverage. Create a library of possibilities that are visual, verbal, or both, and use them to cover each topic in the best way possible.
MORE FUN
Create the news that’s fit to print. Devise new opportunities for the students to be in the book and let them be a part of creating your coverage. They love it!!!
Contributed by:
Paul Ender
Herff Jones Special Consultant
Former JEA Yearbook Adviser of the Year
Additional Resources
Light Bulb Moment
Adviser and staff change the way their yearbook takes shape after they start working with Herff Jones.
My Life Beyond Yearbooks
Giovanni Montalvo didn’t get his yearbook portrait taken his senior year at Cinco Ranch High School. Or his junior, or sophomore or freshman year. He can’t really remember why. He was still interviewed for his senior yearbook and even made a video, “My Life Through Yearbooks,” (above) which has more …
Top 10 Tips for Writing Detail-Packed Captions
Captions are the most read copy in a yearbook because they provide immediate information about what is happening in the photographs featured on the spread. As such, they should be filled with facts and details that the reader wouldn’t otherwise know.
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