KYRA BALCH
The Blaze Co-Editor In Chief 25-26
JEA Wisconsin Journalist of the Year 2026
Commitment to Diversity
Coverage is our main priority in yearbook. We make sure to cover people with all backgrounds and stories. We cover all sports, even ones that aren't ran by the school, to make sure we can get as many people as we can in our book. We do extra planning and organization to make sure we get the most amount of people that we can.
Coverage Planner
The first step after being assigned to an event, is filling out a coverage planner. I use this sheet to track out what I know, need to know and who I need to cover. I try to get as many different grades as we can, so we have more even coverage throughout the entire book. This paper also helps give me backup ideas/people if something falls through.
Coverage Tracker
The coverage tracker is very important, especially with a school as big as ours. We put the names of all of our students, almost 2,000, on the graphic organizer by grade and alphabetically by last name. We use this to track who has been used in the book and who still needs to be. Within this, students can be blacklisted if they were used at least three times or if they are pictured in a dominant picture. This ensures that no one person is used unfairly throughout the book, and we are covering more people. Our reference editor is the one that makes sure this coverage planner is up to date at all times, so the rest of the staff can frequently view it and make smarter decisions.
Diversity Shown in the Yearbook
Student Profiles
Every year, we send out a survey to all of the staff and students in our school, asking them if there are any students that stand out to them or have a unique story. With the results of this, we pick two students, one boy and one girl, from each grade and write a feature story on. This is put in the student section of the yearbook. This year, based on the responses to the serveys, we did two of the same gender per grade; two senior boys, two junior girls, two sophomore girls and two freshman boys. This was decided because of the people we felt were best to feature. Here are some examples of these.
Some of the personality profiles chosen for the '24-'25 yearbook.
Some of the personality profiles chosen for the '25-'26 yearbook.
Diversity in My Work
End Sheet
The end sheet is one of my favorite spreads I've ever done. When working with this spread, I had to look for specific kinds of photos that would work with the cutouts and bleeds. This already limited my options. From there, I had to make sure genders and ethnicities of the people were as even as possible. I picked two pictures with girls and two pictures with boys with different ethnicities.
Baseball/Softball
When doing the spread on Baseball & Softball, I wanted to make sure I kept it equal between the sports. With softball as the dominant, I included more baseball in my secondary. Within my story, I included two baseball players and two softball players to keep that even as well. I also made sure each grade was represented at least once. Since my story was specifically about seniors, I included someone from each of the other grades in my secondary.
Orchestra
I was in charge of the secondaries for this spread. I loved the idea of including all of the instruments, so everyone in orchestra had something they could relate to. I even included quotes from the people that play these instruments.
Diversity isn't in just the pictures, but in everything we do, including stories. In my cross country story, I included students from three different grades, different genders and even the coach of the team. In my baseball/softball story, I included two people from each sport. When I wrote the story about Ava Smith winning journalist of the year in Wisconsin, I made sure to include not only her, but her adviser, close friends and fellow staff members to ensure I got a well rounded story. I will continue this commitment to diversity in all of my journalistic endevers, as without it, I would not have been able to succeed in quality work.