PlusKids set up a small newsroom for the children, and they slipped into their roles at once: editor-in-chief, designer, sub-editor.
A newspaper made by children is one of the most complete activities we can offer, precisely because nobody can carry it alone. Someone has to write, someone else to correct, someone else to decide what goes on the front page and how the page looks. These roles were not invented to make it all look serious — they appear by themselves the moment several people work on the same object.
The most instructive part falls to the editor-in-chief. Having to say that a piece is not going in, or that it needs cutting, is a lesson in negotiation you cannot teach in theory. The same goes for the one asked to rewrite: they learn that a correction is not an insult but the ordinary way of working.
Design brings a different kind of thinking. Space is limited, and if you want a bigger headline you have to give something else up. For many children it is their first encounter with the idea that every choice has a cost.
We still had work to do on it, but we were convinced it would turn out to be the finest children's newspaper there is.