Web and Social Media
The web and social media have allowed for a rapid change in journalism, specifically for students. The ability for real-time reporting and publication allow me and my staff to cover breaking news events as they happen and quickly inform our community of what is happening around them.
Rethinking Breaking News
This year our staff submitted for, and was named a finalist for, the NSPA Innovations pacemaker. Our portfolio was about our coverage of breaking news and the unique approach that LHS takes to cover breaking news stories.
This year, I made it a goal to reimagine the way that we report on breaking news and the way our staff handles stories that are happening right in front of us. I wanted to integrate team reporting and leadership with our social media and website to put out news as events happened and help inform our community quickly. Just because we are a high school doesn't mean we can't report breaking news like a professional paper.
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We featured five stories from the year that were examples of our new breaking news approach allowing us to covers important stories in a timely fashion. I wrote or co-wrote all five with the help of staff and co-editors.
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Click the link to the right to view our whole submission or scroll through the highlights below.
lhsbudget.com
My multimedia compilations
Although I am officially the editor of the print paper, I worked closely with other editors to keep our website up to date with fresh content along a variety of categories.
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I have been the primary poster of stories to our website and worked to promote a wide array of different writers and types of stories while maintaining a high standard for journalistic quality and ethics.
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Another goal that I implemented was creating better organization for our website. This happened in two ways, first through the usage of a Trello board for content management and also keeping our website categories organized to keep our website clean at all times.
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My own content was often times very web-focused. Lots of my reporting work was done on deadline and posted within hours of the events. Even though my official role was for the print publication, making sure our website kept our community informed was a huge focus for me this year.
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Working to plan web-exclusive content as well as multimedia content with our video and photo editors was a key tool that I wanted to amplify this year.
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I planned out and compiled different multimedia packages to enhance our website to tell stories that we couldn't in print.
SNO Badges
Our website, lhsbudget.com, is run through the School Newspapers Online platform, so we made it a goal this year to try to earn all the badges in the SNO badge network.
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The first badge is the Best of SNO badge, which requires three stories from a website to be posted to the Best of SNO publication. We received the badge at the beginning of December. Two of the three stories that got us the badge were written by me and can be found in the reporting and writing section.​
The second badge was one that I took the lead on. It is the Story Page Excellence badge. This badge requires eight fully-developed stories using different SNO page formats. This required planning for not only eight high-quality stories but also the integration of multimedia and strategic website design choices to fulfill the requirements. We received the badge at the beginning of January.
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During second semester, we are closing in on the final few badges. The Audience Engagement badge required consistent social media integration, so I worked with our adviser to appoint a lead editor to both of our social media accounts to work on posting the high-quality, daily content required to fulfill the badge. We were awarded it in February. This revamped social media presences helped boost our analytics, which can be seen to the right.
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We have just assigned our last few pieces of multimedia for the multimedia badge and hope to receive it in late March or Early April.
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We are close to fulfilling the Continuous Coverage badge but it requires the development of a story we are still waiting on. The first parts of this badge I completed at the end of the first semester.
@lhsbudget Twitter and Instagram
Alongside a regular schedule of content, having our website be heavily intertwined with our social media accounts was an important way to publicize our content.
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Working with social media was an area I wasn't super comfortable with when I entered high school, but I have now tweeted out hundreds of stories and football game score updates.
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​Live tweeting sports games was one of my first roles on social media that continued for the rest of my career.
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​Keeping our community up to date with major events as they happened was a challenge and an honor.
Especially in the age of COVID-19, when many people couldn't or didn't want to attend events in person, our social media was a way to keep them updated on what was happening.
Consistent updates for new website content
My social media work
Best of The Budget 2021
As 2021 came to a close, I decided to compile some of the best reporting and work our staff had done and create a social media thread featuring the best of The Budget in 2021.
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​This not only drove people to our social media but helped them see and review all of our best work from the past year.
