The Live Wire is Liberty’s newspaper. The first year Liberty opened, the newspaper staff produced three newspapers, the very first newspaper being only nineteen pages. At the end of that school year, the final newspaper that was published grew immensely to sixty-three pages long. The second year of Liberty’s operation, the first newspaper was forty-three pages long, an impressive improvement from the first newspaper from the previous year. The second year, the staff did not only make improvements to their newspaper but also thought more about their ways of getting more viewership because not many people read the hard copy of the newspaper. For the current year, the staff increased their viewership by making the newspaper strictly online.

The process of creating an article to be published starts with choosing an angle on a specific topic that needs to be written about. Next, the writer goes out and interviews people on the information needed for the article. Then, the writer reviews the interviews, pulling important quotes from them, then that will lead to writing the actual draft. Once a draft is complete, it is sent to the copy editors to make edits. It will be finalized by the editor in chief, and then the editor in chief will upload it to the Live Wire website. 

Publishing an article on the Live Wire takes a whole team of people and numerous steps to get there. A few of the people who are big contributors on staff for an article to be published are the editor in chief, managing editor, and copy editors. 

The role of the editor in chief, currently fulfilled by senior Grace Brusegaard, is to do all of the final editings for an article going up. She posts all of the stories, manages when stories are going up, and makes sure something goes up on the Live Wire every day. Brusegaard also helps all of the staff with mandatory needs like designs and infographics. She also designs all of the ads and manages them when those will go up as well.

The steps Brusegaard took to being an editor in chief were a little different than what is usually expected.

 “Freshman year, I took Foundations of Journalism at West. So I learned how to do design, write newspaper-style, take photos, and do ads. Sophomore year when I came here, there were three of us who had [taken Foundations],” said Brusegaard.

Coming and starting a brand new program from the bottom up as only a sophomore can be hard and very overwhelming. Whatever effort was put into the program from the beginning is how it will continue to carry throughout the years, so not only were Brusegaard and other staff members creating a new program, they were creating legacies. 

“The first year was really overwhelming with no one really knowing how to run the program,” said Brusegaard. 

Brusegaard has some of her own legacies she wants to leave.

“[I want to leave a] positive environment that people feel like they can express themselves and whether they want to do newspaper or not. They can just use this as an outlet to have fun and get to know a lot of new people and also to get out of their comfort zone because you meet so many new people. You also know a lot more about what goes on in school.”

The role of the managing editor, currently fulfilled by Lauren De Young, a junior, is to set deadlines and reach out to all staff members currently writing articles with deadlines, keeping them on track and accountable to hit their deadline. By doing this, she is also making sure everything gets done on time so articles can be posted in a timely manner. De Young has been on staff for about a year now, joining halfway through her sophomore year. While keeping articles on time and making sure all staff are staying on task. With this role De Young was set back from her writing for a span of time, feeling a little heavy-handed with the work she had. 

“In the first trimester, I definitely had to take a step back from writing just to make sure I had everything organized, because that is my job, to keep everything in this class organized,” said De Young.

To become a managing editor staff members interested in having a leadership position must fill out a form of interests.

The role of the copy editor, currently fulfilled by De Young as well as senior Abby Fowler. Fowler has been on staff since the beginning, her sophomore year. Their roles as copy editors are to go through and edit all articles to make sure everything in the article flows and matches the newspaper-style writing. On average for an article to be edited, it can take between ten and thirty minutes, but this all depends on what copy of the article they get.

De Young was really looking forward to being a copy editor on staff because grammar has always come easily to her and she has known the basic grammar rules. Fowler has always wanted to be a copy editor. When she was applying to be copy editor in her sophomore year at Liberty, she really emphasized how much she enjoys grammar, proofreading, and copy editing. 

The staff for newspaper continues to grow and improve the quality of articles being published on the Live Wire. The staff is the whole body behind the Live Wire and why it is continuing to grow in viewership, quality, and articles.