New editors bring promise of a revamped Falcon

The Falcon staff will again have more than 70 students next year, led by Jackie Gu and Debbie Soung

After another year of bringing students informative news stories, passionate opinion pieces and everything in between, the Falcon has come full circle and chosen its new leaders. The editors-in-chief for next year’s Falcon will be juniors Deborah Soung and Jackie Gu, who say they are excited to get to work.

“I wanted to be EIC [editor-in-chief] because I absolutely love the ‘Falcon,’” Soung said.  

Soung and Gu are excited to take on the challenge of leading more than 70 students split between two periods. Both girls, this year’s current InDepth section editors, often spend hours each day in the journalism room.

Gu will be the editor for the third-period staff and will work with assistant editor Paul Jung, one of the Entertainment section editors currently.  Soung will be the editor of the fourth-period staff and will work with assistant editor and current School Scope editor Kelly Liu.  

The process for selecting editors changed this year with more involvement from the Falcon staff. Rather than ask for volunteers for the editor-in-chief positions, journalism adviser Mike Tyler took input from the staffs.  Every student on staff suggested two juniors they thought would make good editors, and Tyler used this process for nominating finalists for the editor-in-chief positions.  

“The students work with each other, so they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses; that’s really what’s driving this decision,” Tyler said.  

Tyler interviewed the finalists — and took another staff vote among the finalists — before picking Gu and Soung.

The pair have already laid out a plan for next year and have identified areas for improvement.  

Soung and Gu plan to put more emphasis on the Falcon website, which is in the process of a redesign that will debut in about a month, and hope their staffs will work more efficiently.  The two are wasting no time and already have their section editors assigned for the coming year.  

Current editor-in-chief of the fourth period staff, senior Christine Bancroft, is already excited about her successors.

“[Soung] and [Gu] are both phenomenal workers and writers,” Bancroft said.

While she has faith in the new editors, Bancroft has some words of wisdom for the young leaders assuming the helm.

“My best advice is for them to trust themselves,” Bancroft said. “It seems really difficult to do so when you're sitting up in front of a class of 35 students who, in any other class of the day, are just like you, and being asked to teach and lead them.”

Arguably just as important to Falcon staffers as the publication itself are the unique atmosphere writers are a part of and the bonds they create.

“Ultimately, I not only want the newspaper to succeed as a publication, but to also continue being a group people want to be a part of,” Gu said.