|
ONLINE COVERAGE
There's nothing like an entire class literally applauding your breaking news COVID-19 coverage. There's also nothing like students gathering around a phone to watch your humor videos. A lot of the multimedia content we create is student-inspired, which motivates our rapid online audience growth. We've gained 40-some followers on Instagram in the last two weeks, for example. Strategies we've used to boost online engagement:
Instagram insights show how, just in the last two weeks, we increased our reach and impressions to new accounts and followers by the hundreds and thousands. Analytics software on our various platforms have allowed us to curate content based on the story context and intended purpose. Left: Gift wrapping with Clara, our News Editor, at our Barnes & Noble book fair. Right: Senior staff writer Davis grabbing a bite at our Noodles & Co. fundraiser.
|
IN-PRINT REDESIGN: GIVING THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT
In the past, we've hosted focus groups of students to determine what they wanted to see in our paper. This year, we made a pledge to focus on improving readability and accessibility in our print issues. That meant changing everything from overall branding to indents. Larger font sizes, smaller paper, cleaner font families, strong visual cues. And it worked - there used to always be leftover newspapers on the stands, but now, when a new issue drops, all the new copies are gone from the newspaper stands within a few days! We refill several times a month!
CIRCULATION This year, we started a subscription service and delivery platform for students and community members. We also started making a point to hand-deliver copies of the paper to each source quoted and subject photographed. GROWING THE TEAM Our school is incredibly diverse for our area - this year, for the first time, minority students made up more than 50 percent of the school demographics. We want to make sure that our audience is heard, and one step is to have a diverse staff that can address the issues of our community. |