Yearbook News · School newsrooms & combined journalism-yearbook staffs · Early access · 2026

The year’s coverage log — from pitch to published, feeding the news site during the year and the book’s news section at deadline

A yearbook’s news section should not be assembled in April from notes and memory. Yearbook News is the editorial workflow that runs throughout the year: stories pitched, assigned to a writer, moved through reporting and drafting and copy edit and EIC sign-off, and published to a coverage log that exists long before the deadline arrives. When the deadline comes, the news section draws from real reporting — bylines from the staff roster, photo cutlines from the caption block, and an editorial record of who reviewed what and who signed it. Early access — no pricing commitment, no signup, no live payments today.

Book a conversation How it works

Editorial workfloweleven stages, pitch to publish, with a signed gate at every step — EIC sign-off always required

Byline from the rosterevery byline and photo credit is a real block in the story, recorded on the staff timeline

Dual destinationthe coverage log feeds a live news site during the year and the book’s news section at deadline

Consent-gatedstudent consent re-resolved fresh at the publish gate — a non-consenting subject blocks the publish move

The editorial workflow — eleven stages, a gate at every one

The EIC holds the terminal gate. The adviser coaches without holding it. The engine enforces both.

A school newsroom’s approval chain has a specific structure: the copy editor checks the copy, the design editor clears the layout, the editor-in-chief signs the terminal content gate — the eic_signoff — and the adviser reviews without holding that gate (the press-law-correct discipline: a publication’s editorial judgment rests with the EIC, not the faculty sponsor). That structure is enforced by code, not by policy reminder. An unscreened stage advance is refused. A publish move without an eic_signoff gate in the approval chain is refused. A publish move that skips two stages forward is refused. The enforcement is at the data layer, not advisory.

The story ethics evaluation runs at the same publish gate: source attribution tracking, a libel risk scan over the body text. And at the moment the story advances to scheduled or published, every student tagged as a story subject has their consent re-resolved fresh. A non-consenting student is not named in a published story. The gate is fail-closed: the story does not publish around a missing consent, not by a warning the adviser might click past, but by an engine refusal. The workflow engine, the approval chain, the ethics evaluation, and the consent gate are built and production-ready.

Book a conversation Full platform

How it works

The newsroom year in four stages

Yearbook News runs on the school year’s rhythm: assignment setup and section planning at the start, real coverage throughout the year, a deadline season where the book’s news section fills from existing reporting, and a year-end byline portfolio and editorial handoff. Every stage is described as built today.

Step 1 · Start of year — sections, beats, and the assignment calendar

At the start of the year the adviser and editor-in-chief configure the publication: the section structure (news, features, sports, arts, opinion), the staff roster with role assignments, and the editorial calendar of events worth covering. Story assignments can be created before the first event of the year so the section editors know their beat from day one. The three assignment modes — competitive, split-angle, co-write — are chosen per story so the desk knows how submissions will be resolved before writers start reporting. Student data is consent-gated at setup: a student’s work appears on the news site only if they have opted in to publication. The organisation owns its roster and staff data from day one.

Step 2 · The year in coverage — events, assignments, drafts, and editorial review

As events happen — the fall play, homecoming, the winter sports season, an assembly, a school board decision — the section editor pitches a story, the editor-in-chief assigns it, and the writer enters the reporting stage. Drafts move through the stage ladder: reporting, drafting, content edit, copy edit, design. Each stage advance requires the appropriate role to sign the gate — a copy editor clears the copy_edit gate; a design editor clears design; the EIC holds the terminal eic_signoff gate. The story ethics evaluation (source attribution, libel risk scan) runs at the publish gate and blocks a story with open checks. A story with a non-consenting student tagged as a subject does not advance to published — the consent gate is re-resolved fresh at the moment of publish, fail-closed.

Step 3 · Deadline season — the book’s news section fills from a year of real reporting

When the yearbook deadline arrives, the news section is not a blank page. The coverage log holds every story the staff assigned, drafted, edited, and signed during the year — each with its bylines, photo cutlines, and the editorial record of how it was reviewed and who approved it. The adviser and editor-in-chief select which published stories flow into the book’s news section, in the order and proportion the book design calls for. The newsprint PDF export (ISOnewspaper26v4 / PDF/X-1a, with TAC-cap preflight and 100%-K body-text gate) is ready for print newspaper issues on the same coverage. No last-minute assembly from notes. The section writes itself from the year.

Step 4 · Year-end — staff timeline, byline portfolio, and editorial handoff

At year-end each staff member has a contribution timeline: every story they wrote, every review they gave, every editorial approval they signed, and every photo they shot or credited. A student can point to their byline record as a real portfolio item — a documented body of editorial work, not a self-reported claim. The outgoing editor-in-chief hands off the publication configuration (section structure, approval-policy settings, editorial calendar) to the incoming staff without losing the coverage archive. The organisation owns its data. One-click export is available in writing — every story, every byline record, every editorial approval, and every consent record leaves with the organisation if it ever moves.

The full platform

Five engines — honest about what is built and what is coming

Every feature is labelled honestly: Built means the underlying engine is production-ready. In development means the public-facing surface, wire-up, or delivery integration is in active build. We do not claim otherwise.

The full editorial workflow — from pitch to publish, with a gate at every stage

A school newsroom runs on a story stage ladder: pitched, assigned, reporting, drafting, content edit, copy edit, design, EIC sign-off, adviser review, scheduled, published. Each stage has a gate — an approval that must be recorded before the story advances forward. Copy edit is signed by a copy editor. The EIC sign-off is always required and is the terminal content gate; a story without it does not reach the scheduled or published stage, not because a form disables a button, but because the engine refuses the stage transition. Adviser review is additionally required when the publication operates under a prior-review policy. The gate is enforced at the data layer, not advisory. A backward skip, a forward skip, or a publish past an unsigned gate is rejected by the engine itself. The full newsroom workflow engine is built and production-ready.

Newsroom workflow engine built · live

Ten scoped roles for a real editorial staff — access enforced at the data layer

A student newspaper or combined yearbook-newspaper staff runs by role: an editor-in-chief who holds the terminal sign-off gate; section editors who own their beat; a managing editor who coordinates across sections; copy editors, design editors, photo editors, and an online editor for the news-site surface; an adviser who oversees every publication; and staffers who work their own assignment without touching anyone else’s. Each role on this platform is enforced as real access control at the data layer — a section editor edits their section and cannot overwrite a co-editor’s spread; a staffer works their own submission without seeing another writer’s draft; the adviser oversees without holding the EIC’s content gate (the press-law-correct discipline: the adviser coaches, the EIC signs). Role-scoped access is built and live. A role assignment is also a real record — a byline or editorial approval on the contribution timeline reflects the actual role that performed the action.

Scoped staff roles built · live

Three ways to run a story assignment — select the best draft, split angles, or co-write

The assignment engine supports three modes, each with a built resolution path. In competitive mode, multiple writers submit drafts; the editor (or the peer-review tally) selects the strongest one, with reviews blind so drafts are ranked on the writing, not the byline. In split-angle mode, writers cover the same story from different angles and the editor combines them into one piece, with per-passage attribution preserved for the co-byline. In co-write mode, contributors merge their work into a single draft with combined attribution. A voted tally can be requested explicitly on any competitive assignment — a peer ballot replaces a single editor call. The resolution engine surfaces ties explicitly so an editor breaks them intentionally, never silently. All three assignment modes are built and production-ready.

Assignment modes built · live

Bylines from the staff roster, photo cutlines from the caption block — both on the timeline

A story’s byline is a typed block in the story document: the writer’s name and role (“Jordan Lee, staff writer”), drawn from the staff roster and recorded when the piece is published. A photo’s credit is a named field on the photo block alongside the cutline — the newsroom term for the photo caption. Both bylines and photo credits appear on the staff member’s contribution timeline: a record of every story they wrote, every piece they reviewed, every editorial approval they signed, and every photo they shot or credited. The timeline is consent-gated and access-controlled — a staff member sees their own timeline; their adviser sees the state for their publication; the public sees only what the staff member has opted in to sharing. Byline blocks, photo cutlines, and the staff contribution timeline are built and live.

Bylines, cutlines & timeline built · live

The coverage log feeds the news site during the year and the book’s news section at deadline

A yearbook’s news section should not be written in April from notes and memory. It should be built from coverage the staff actually did during the year: the homecoming story the section editor assigned in October, the winter assembly piece, the spring play review. Each of those stories runs the same editorial workflow — assigned, drafted, copy-edited, signed — and once published, it exists in the coverage log that feeds both surfaces: the news site during the year, and the book’s news section when the deadline arrives. The newsprint PDF export (ISOnewspaper26v4 / PDF/X-1a, with TAC-cap preflight and 100%-K body-text gate) is built for print-newspaper issues. The live public news-site URL — the surface that makes published stories accessible at a school domain — is in active development; it is not live today. Print checkout (the interface where a family orders a copy) is honest-off: the money rail is founder-gated. The coverage log and the newsprint export are built; the public news-site carrier and print checkout are honest-off.

Coverage log & newsprint export built · public news-site URL honest-off

Who it’s for

Built for the combined journalism and yearbook staff — and for the newsroom that publishes a paper alongside the book

The combined journalism and yearbook staff

Many schools run their newspaper and yearbook off the same staff under one adviser. The coverage the reporters write for the paper is the same coverage the yearbook’s news section draws from at deadline. Yearbook News is built for that reality: one editorial workflow, one byline record, one coverage log — feeding both the news site during the year and the book at the end of it. The section editors who run beats for the newspaper are the same section editors whose approved coverage the book draws from.

The yearbook staff covering more than pictures

A yearbook staff that wants its news section to tell what happened — not just who showed up — needs an editorial workflow, not only a photo library. Yearbook News gives that staff a running coverage log of real stories: the homecoming recap, the winter assembly, the spring arts showcase, the school board decision that affected every student. Each one assigned, reported, drafted, copy-edited, and signed before the deadline, so the news section is not a last-minute scramble in April.

The adviser teaching real journalism skills

An adviser who teaches journalism wants students doing real journalism work: pitching stories, interviewing sources, writing under an editorial deadline, reviewing each other’s drafts, and seeing their byline on a published piece. The editorial workflow, the assignment modes, the fail-closed stage gates, and the staff contribution timeline give the adviser a real infrastructure for teaching those skills with documented outcomes — not a consumer word processor handed to a student.

Three assignment modes — how a story gets from pitch to byline

Competitive, split-angle, co-write — each with a built resolution path

A story about homecoming might go competitive: three writers each pitch an angle, the desk assigns the pitch to all three, each submits a draft, peer reviews go in blind (the draft is ranked on the writing, not the byline), and the editor selects the strongest. A story about the school’s new athletic facility might go split-angle: one writer covers the student athlete experience, another covers the construction and funding decision, and the editor combines both angles into one story with per-passage attribution preserved in the co-byline. A collaborative feature might go co-write: two writers work on one submission together, and both bylines appear on the published piece.

Ties are surfaced explicitly in every mode: the engine identifies the tied submissions and the editor breaks the tie intentionally. A tie is never silently resolved in the platform’s favour. All three modes are built and production-ready. The resolution engine runs the same consent gate before publish in all three: every student tagged as a story subject has their consent re-resolved fresh.

Student consent & staff data

Consent re-resolved at the publish gate. Staff data owned by the school. Never sold.

Every student a story names or depicts is tagged as a story subject in the platform. When the story advances to scheduled or published, the platform re-resolves that student’s consent for the publication purpose fresh — at the moment of publish, not from a cached record that may have changed. A non-consenting student blocks the publish move. Fail-closed: the story does not publish around the missing consent. The student’s identity is not disclosed in the rejection message to the reporter — the gate fires without naming the reason at that level of detail.

The staff roster, the byline records, the editorial approvals, and the story archive belong to the school’s publication — not to the platform. No staff or student data is sold to or shared with outside companies or advertisers. A student staff member’s contribution timeline (their bylines, their photo credits, their editorial approvals) is visible to themselves in full, to their adviser in an oversight view, and to the public only when the student has opted in to public access. Consent is not assumed. It is collected. It can be withdrawn at any time. One-click export is available in writing — every story, byline record, consent record, and editorial approval log leaves with the organisation if it ever moves.

What is built and what is coming — plainly

The editorial engine is built. The live news-site URL is in development. Print checkout is honest-off.

Built and production-ready today: the newsroom workflow engine (eleven-stage story ladder, fail-closed gate at every step, EIC sign-off always required); staff role scoping (ten roles, access enforced at the data layer, not advisory); the three assignment modes (competitive, split-angle, co-write, with blind review and explicit tie resolution); byline blocks and photo cutlines (built into the story block type system); the staff contribution timeline (bylines, photo credits, editorial approvals, consent-gated and access-controlled); story ethics evaluation (source attribution, libel risk scanner, fail-closed at publish); consent re-resolution at publish (every tagged story subject checked fresh, fail-closed); and newsprint PDF export (ISOnewspaper26v4 / PDF/X-1a, TAC preflight, 100%-K body-text enforcement, tabloid and broadsheet imposition).

In active development, not yet available: the live public news-site URL (the surface that makes published stories publicly accessible at a school domain). Honest-off today: print checkout (the interface where a family orders a printed copy) — the money rail is not enabled for live transactions. There is no live checkout here. No billing. No subscription. We say so directly because school journalism advisers and editors deserve to know what is production-ready and what is still being wired.

Connected to the school publishing platform

The newsroom generates the coverage. The production editor builds the book. The media layer adds what print can’t hold.

Yearbook News generates the coverage that feeds the book’s news section. Yearbook Press is the production editor: where spreads are built, portraits placed, typography controlled, and the press-ready file exported. The two are the reporting engine and the design surface of the same publication — the coverage log feeds the news section; the production editor is where that section takes its final form on the page. Yearbook Media is the video and audio layer: the clips and audio that print cannot hold, gated to the school community, linked from a spread via QR code. Reporting is text and photos and sources and bylines — that is Yearbook News. The moment behind the story, the winning play, the concert — that is Yearbook Media. The full publishing platform, including the classroom layer (Yearbook Education) and the underlying engine, lives at homeroom.software.

yearbook.press yearbook.media yearbook.education homeroom.software

Early access · Yearbook advisers, journalism advisers, combined staff programmes · 2026

Book a conversation to see the current state honestly

Yearbook News is in active development. We do conversations that show the current state honestly: how the story stage ladder works from pitch to published, how the three assignment modes (competitive, split-angle, co-write) resolve, how bylines and photo cutlines appear on the staff contribution timeline, how the fail-closed publish gate fires when a consent is missing, and what the newsprint PDF export looks like against the ISOnewspaper26v4 preflight. There is no pricing commitment and no signup. If it looks right for your staff, we discuss what early access looks like.

To book: email [email protected].

FAQ

Common questions

How is Yearbook News different from the yearbook production editor?

The production editor — the spread layout tool at yearbook.press — is where you build the finished book: you place portrait grids, arrange photos on spreads, control typography, and export a press-ready file. Yearbook News is the engine behind the news section of that book: the editorial workflow that assigns stories, moves them through a reporting-and-review ladder, and builds the coverage log the news section draws from at deadline. The two are different operations. You do not need the production editor to run the newsroom; and a newsroom that publishes only to a news site — no printed book — still has full access to the editorial workflow. They work together or independently.

What does the editorial workflow look like in practice?

A story moves through eleven stages: pitched, assigned, reporting, drafting, content_edit, copy_edit, design, eic_signoff, adviser_review, scheduled, published. Each stage has a gate — an approval that must be recorded before the story advances. The copy editor signs the copy_edit gate; the design editor signs design; the editor-in-chief signs eic_signoff (always required, always terminal). A publication that operates under a prior-review policy requires the adviser to sign adviser_review as well. The engine enforces one-step-forward-only transitions — a story cannot skip the eic_signoff gate and land at published, not by permission but by code. A failed transition returns the reason. The workflow is built and production-ready.

What are the three assignment modes?

Competitive mode: the editor assigns a story to multiple writers, each submits a draft, and the peer review tally (or a single editor call) selects the strongest piece. Reviews are blind in competitive mode — the draft is ranked on the writing, not the byline, so a newer writer with a strong draft can win over a senior staffer with a weaker one. Split-angle mode: writers each cover a different angle on the same event; the editor combines them into one story with per-passage attribution preserved for the co-byline. Co-write mode: contributors collaborate on a single submission and the byline credits both writers. All three modes are built and production-ready; the selection engine surfaces ties explicitly — they are never silently broken.

How do bylines and photo credits work?

A byline is a typed block in the story document — a BylineBlock — carrying the writer’s name and staff role (“Jordan Lee, staff writer”). A photo credit is a named field on the photo block alongside the cutline (the newsroom term for the caption). Both are built into the story block type system and recorded at publish. They appear on the staff member’s contribution timeline: a consent-gated, access-controlled record of every byline, co-byline, photo credit, editorial approval, and review they earned. The timeline is useful to a student as a portfolio record — the actual published work, not a self-reported list — and useful to an adviser as an oversight view of who contributed what across the year.

Can the same story feed a live news site during the year and the book’s news section at deadline?

That is the design. A story assigned in October for the homecoming event, reported, drafted, copy-edited, and signed goes into the coverage log when it publishes. At yearbook deadline, the adviser and editor-in-chief draw from that log when building the book’s news section: the coverage is already done, already reviewed, already signed by the EIC — it does not need to be reconstructed. The live public news-site URL — the surface that makes published stories accessible at a school domain during the year — is in active development and is not live today. It will be the surface where the story appears between its publish date and its inclusion in the book. The coverage log itself is built. The public-facing delivery surface is in build.

How does the fail-closed publish gate work?

A story may advance to ‘published’ only when every required approval stage gate has been signed by the correct role — the copy editor at copy_edit, the EIC at eic_signoff, and the adviser at adviser_review when prior-review policy applies. The engine validates two things at the publish move: (1) the stage transition itself is a legal single-step forward move; and (2) the approval chain in the story record contains the required signed gates. A story that passes the stage check but lacks a required gate is rejected at the approval-chain check — defense in depth so that even an out-of-band column change in the data cannot make an unsigned story publish. The story ethics evaluation (source attribution, libel risk scanner) also runs at the publish gate and blocks the move if any blocking check is open.

How does student consent work for stories that name or depict a student?

When a staff member tags a student as a story subject — because the story names or depicts that student — the platform re-resolves that student’s consent at the moment the story advances to scheduled or published. If the student’s consent for publication is not in place, the publish move is refused. Fail-closed: the story does not publish around a non-consenting student. Consent is not assumed; it is not carried forward from a prior event; it is checked fresh at the moment of publication. Student data is never visible to other families. A suppressed or do-not-publish student’s presence in a story is not disclosed to the reporter — the gate fires without identifying the reason at that level of detail, protecting the student’s privacy.

What about printing a newspaper?

The newsprint PDF export is built and production-ready. It applies an ISOnewspaper26v4 / PDF/X-1a output profile with a TAC cap (plant-configured 220-240%), a 100%-K-only body-text enforcement (rich black body copy returns a 422 with the offending blocks listed), and type-size warnings at 6pt / 12pt-reverse. The imposition engine computes tabloid 4-page sheets or broadsheet 8-page web-press sections, padded with blanks and house ads when the page count does not fill whole units — the padding is reported honestly, not silent. The school submits the exported file to whichever print lab it uses. Print checkout — the interface where a family orders a copy of the printed newspaper — is honest-off: the money rail is founder-gated and is not enabled for live transactions today.

What about the story ethics evaluation?

The ethics evaluation runs at the publish gate as a second-pass check after the approval chain. It scans the story’s body text (headline, deck, body grafs, pull quotes) for libel risk signals. It checks that sources are attributed in the record and that the required source-confirmation boxes have been checked by the appropriate role. A blocking check that has not been resolved holds the publish move — the ethics evaluation is fail-closed, not advisory. A clean scan does not guarantee a story is legally sound; it is a tool to prompt the editorial team to make deliberate choices about attribution and sourcing, not a substitute for editorial judgment. The ethics evaluation engine is built and production-ready.

What can our staff actually use right now?

The platform is in active development. In a demo we walk through the current state honestly: the story stage ladder (pitch a story, advance it through reporting and drafting, run a copy-edit gate, record an EIC sign-off), the three assignment modes in action (a competitive submission tally, a split-angle combine, a co-write attribution), how bylines and photo credits appear on the staff contribution timeline, and how the consent gate fires when a non-consenting student is tagged as a story subject. The newsprint PDF export can be walked through as well — the TAC preflight, the imposition output, the PDF/X-1a profile. None of this involves live payments or a live public-facing news-site URL today. A conversation is the honest next step — we show what is built, what the news-site delivery timeline looks like, and what early access means for your staff.

How does staff and student data work? What about minor students on the staff?

The newsroom staff — the membership list, the role assignments, the byline records, the editorial approvals — belongs to the school’s publication, not to the platform. Student staff members’ work (their bylines, their photo credits, their contribution timeline) is access-controlled: visible to themselves in full, visible to their adviser in an oversight view, and visible publicly only when the student has opted in to public profile access. Consent is not assumed. It is collected. A student who has not opted in to public access does not appear in any public-facing view of the publication staff. Consent can be withdrawn at any time. Minor student data is never shared with advertisers or outside companies. One-click export is available in writing — if the organisation ever leaves the platform, every story, every byline record, every consent record, and every editorial approval log leaves with it.

When is the platform available?

The platform is in active development. The newsroom workflow engine, staff role scoping, the three assignment modes, byline blocks, photo cutlines, the staff contribution timeline, the fail-closed publish gate, the story ethics evaluation, consent re-resolution at publish, and the newsprint PDF export (ISOnewspaper26v4 / PDF/X-1a) are built and production-ready. The live public news-site URL and carrier delivery are in active development and are not enabled yet. Print checkout is honest-off — the money rail is not enabled for live transactions. There is no live checkout here. No billing. No subscription. The honest next step is a conversation where we show the current state and discuss what early access looks like for your staff.