Editor’s Note: Ava and Sofia on the meaning of leadershsip

By Sofia Williams and Ava Nicols
Editors-in-Chief

We started our tenure as Editors-in-Chief of La Vista at the end of the 2022-23 school year by interviewing candidates for the next year’s editorial board. Our favorite question to ask the prospective editors: what does being a leader mean to you?

It’s been twelve months, nine issues of La Vista, and many, many long hours sitting in the back office making edits and refining page designs, since we first asked that question of our editors. With this more experienced perspective, we’d like to tackle the question once again, but this time for ourselves.

To us, leadership is compromise; it’s understanding the other person’s point of view and budging from your own so that the conversation can move forward. It’s also relinquishing some control to others; in order to make each section uniquely excellent and to fully realize the potential of our staff, we realized quickly that we couldn’t be the sole decision-makers of the paper. Our best layouts, stories, and designs result from collaborations between Editors-in-Chief, section editors, and staff members.

Leadership is connection, too–we learned that if we made an effort to be approachable to staff members, they would more readily come to us with their questions, feel more a part of the La Vista community, and, as a result, contribute to a more cohesive working environment in the newsroom.

Leading by example is also among the most important responsibilities as Editors-in-Chief and leaders on this campus. In order to gain respect from our staff and peers we strive to always give the same respect back and be conscious that each of us have busy lives outside of Room 101 and Mira Costa High School. 

Having climbed the ranks in La Vista ourselves, we understand the expected commitments in each position. Maintaining the integrity of the paper while ensuring staff members are playing to their strengths and proud of their contributions is equally as important to us as fulfilling a job description. Having empathy for our staff and their happiness positively impacts the culture of our work environment and, I think we can both agree, has made our experience unforgettable.

As we embark on the next chapter in our lives, we are buoyed by the fact that La Vista has not only made us better writers, editors, and interviewers, but also better journalists, leaders, and people.