Digital Media and Web
During my time as The Emery's online Editor-in-Chief, The online Emery...
gained 1,171 followers
received 35,641 page views
published 257 online stories
Creating a digital legacy
During the 2019-2020 school year, my first year on The Emery's staff, I became the online Editor-in-Chief. It was pretty apparent that I was the first online EIC as the website had a a rotating 10 stories. My former print Editor-in-Chief Julie Heng and my adviser Sara-Beth Badalamente had very lofty expectations:
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1. Post everyday
2. Design and form the "back-end" of the website
3. Create a space for all staff and students to receive the most up to date information
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Through the year, I exceeded these expectations in strides.
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#3: build a community
The Emery has built a community of regular print issue readers however, the online format changed this entirely. We started using our Instagram to post Huron news such as information about events or performances.
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We live tweeted sports matches, tournaments and concerts.
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And most importantly, we kept the community constantly updated. This is demonstrated especially in times of COVID. When news was coming out about school closures or sports practices, The Emery was the first to report. We would post on our Instagram and have full articles on our website to gauge traction while keeping our followers up to date.
An example of our Instagram post COVID reporting with a related story. (Click on the photo!)
COVID Coverage
This year I focused heavily on the school reopening plans for Ann Arbor Public Schools. AAPS has been completely virtual and therefore going back to school has been a very big debate. Below is an article about the information for teachers looking for vaccines. Click the picture for the link.
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Below is an article I wrote breaking the news about the school reopening plan. This was re-printed with an update in Issue 4 of The Emery. This is the fourth most viewed article on The Emery's website with 237 views. Click the picture for the link.
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#1: post everyday
Posting every day was no easy task, ask any online editor. However, we built up the program so that I could get to this goal. Initially I focused on a posting schedule. This took a lot of rallying and communication from me. Ultimately at the beginning, not everything we were posting was really substantial. To help, I created the “Humans of Huron” feature that now runs five times per week. These may be short question and answer articles, but they are quick meaningful reads that help tell the stories of our students. They were also a huge hit on Instagram. With more practice of the shorter deadlines, plus a mentor system for online stories, we started posting content with lots of journalistic reporting and built our readership.
Above is an example of a Humans of Huron article from last year that was very popular both online and on Instagram. Click the photo to read the Q&A.
I didn't write down the names of each reporter as I typically knew exactly who was writing what, the calendar just reminded of me when I had to post. After trying out a paper calendar, I decided to move to an online version to make it more accessible to other editors.
When I became the online EIC, the website existed, but it didn't function. We were missing multiple categories such as multimedia, and about page, and really lacked content. Immediately I started working on a redesign where the front page had our social media, a clear dominant, and a placement for every section we had. The website has since been redesigned as we constantly are working to make our publication better for our readers, but in the video below I talk about the design changes I made.
#2: design
On top of design, I designed our software. This meant creating every page and section necessary for the website as well as having our policies available. I did spend some time making sure that our policies were relevant to the website as well as adding any policies online-specific.
Last year I reached out to The Communicator's online EICs for a lot of help. They gave me tips on what works for their website as well as feedback when I did my redesign. When I was designing thehuronemery.com, I relied on chscommunicator.com and elestoque.org for inspiration as well as the Sno distinguished sites. My goal was to make sure that The Emery was following typical layout or design rules while also bringing in our own theme elements.
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Another resource I considered was the rubric for the Website Spartan awarded by the Michigan Scholastic Press Association. I actively searched for these types of resources to ensure that our website was up to par.
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The backbone - my online work
As online EIC, I sought to find new ways to reprort. We did this in quite a few ways including thinglink, interactive maps, Adobe Spark, etc. Below are some of my examples of interactive reporting.
Interactive maps
This was my first interactive map about where 2020 seniors were attending college. Even though I think the idea was really interesting, the execution was a little boring because the dots would be scattered if a lot of students attended the same school or area. This link demonstrates a map I made this year which is more in-depth and cleaner about student jobs.
Thinglink
Even though I didn't write this review, I worked with the writers to create an online interactive graphic. I combined parts of their review with information about the brand and the start of this shop. While I liked their review, some readers might not look through the whole review. However, through ThingLink we can engage the audience so they want to explore the entire piece.
Flourish
This year I have taken over The Emery Reads, a section of the print newspaper where I recommend books. I have since also added this to the website using Fourish. To the right represents the in-print version of The Emery Reads while this link represents the interactive version. There aren't many parts of our website really accessible for people who are deaf/audio-based learners so I incorporate audio into every card.
Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is super helpful when we have really long stories. We typically use it to continue in-print stories to the website. Here is an example about the 2020 Presidential candidate policies that I created. This Adobe Spark wasn't for my story but I still helped create and format it in order to keep the same theme as the in-print story.
Photo credit at the bottom of the Adobe Spark.
Online-only articles
As Online EIC, I wanted to set an example for the quality of our content with multiple in-depth stories. Most of these are from my time as the EIC but some are from this school year. I placed a focus on feature reporting as this is what is most popular within our website-only content.
Instagram posts
At the beginning of my tenure as Online Editor-in-Chief, we had about 199 followers. By the end we reached 600 followers and I have since been helping with further Instagram expansion.