Q: What is the Windermere Word!?

A: It’s Windermere’s school newspaper!!! Or magazine, whatever you want to call it.

Q: How often do you publish issues? And who can write for them? I heard it was only Leadership kids… and how?

We publish issues once a month, the first wednesday of every month. Anybody can write for the Word and they only have to give us an email at WHS_WORD@YAHOO.CA or submit their articles on the “submit” page. No interviews or anything required. The articles we choose to publish are chosen based on whether it’s relevant, somewhat well-written, or if isn’t offensive or anything like that.

Q: If I just have ONE article I want to submit, like as freelance, can I do that?

Definitely. Send it to our email. You even have the option of making yourself anonymous if you feel like you don’t want your name published.

Q: Do the articles have to environmental?

No, of course not! They can be of almost anything. We also frequently advertise for other clubs and school events.

Q: Why did you guys publish the October Issue on RED PAPER? That’s SO hard to read and it hurts my eyes!

A: Unfortunately we don’t have a choice over what colour paper we get to use. Whatever is in the photocopying room and is in stock, we use. It was either that or green, and that just didn’t go with October and red looked better - so red it was.

Q: Why didn’t you guys have a Sports/Fashion/Comic/Advice section before!?

A: We didn’t have one because we couldn’t get any writers to send us their articles in on time. We have it now

Q: What took you so long to get Warrior of the Month back and how do you nonimate someone?

A: Warrior of the Month, we found, was highly bias last year and it was more of a popularity contest than ever. So we decided we wouldn’t do it. But because people kept asking for it, we decided to bring it back but try to make it better by creating a better system of nominations. Still, not many people have been nominating students or teachers, so it’s been slow to come back. You can now nominate someone by voting in an anonymous poll every month on our website.

Q: Who makes the paper every month?

A: Well it’s a joint effort – our team of writers sends us, the editors, articles every month and we put them together. If one of us is doing the layout for the month, the other one is taking care of the website. Promotion is definitely a big task for the both of us and a lot of grade 8s that volunteer each month to help. We always try to alternate/share the work.

Q: Why don’t you have a complaints section where the editors can reply back?

A: Sure, just send us an email and we’d be happy to address it. If it’s rather harsh, we appreciate that you don’t post it on the web blog because we don’t want to create any type of negative environment.

Q: What is your objective as a school newspaper? What is it that you are trying to achieve?

Obviously as any school newspaper would like to do, we try to cover school events and make school life more interesting. Our main objective however, is to educate others, especially young people, on things that they may be genuinely unaware of. As high school students ourselves, we believe that not enough is being taught in our curriculum. Time is mindlessly spent on studying for tests and working on assignments. That doesn’t mean extra-curricular activities do not exist – but where else are students getting their information on current events? Politics? Environmental issues? Social issues? How will they be prepared to enter the ‘real’ world? Perhaps your upbringing was a little different from us ‘baby boomers’, but generally speaking, if we want a better education, it’s up to us to get it. The Word just tries to help with that.