High School Journalists Launch First Online Paper

The Eagle, Hartland High School's student-run newspaper, is keeping up with the times by launching their first online newspaper.

Keeping their news current and more updated was one of the biggest reasons for the change, according to the Eagle advisor, Elaine Bell. 

“It’s really hard to be current when you’re coming out every six weeks,” Bell said. “So to try and do a traditional newspaper, we found that the readership wasn’t as interested and it was really hard to have current topics.”

The online paper is hosted for free by MyHighSchooljournalism.org and Bell’s goal is to have new editions published every two week. 

“It’s quicker and it’s fun because the writing is shorter so it’s less intimidating,” Bell said.

Online Editor Jocelyn Reinert agrees and says although it’s a change from her past years on the paper, getting faster and more current information out to their readers is important.

“It’s adding a lot of chaos right now,” Reinert said, “but hopefully we have it straightened out and will get into a little bit more of a rhythm.”

The site launched on October 15, and so far, according to Reinert, their readership may still be small, but the feedback has been positive. 

“I don’t think it’s as big as what we want it to be or what we hoped it would be quite yet,” the Hartland senior said, “but hopefully with time, more people will check it out and read it and we can really get news out there like we want to." 

Students involved with the school newspaper will also still be issuing a newsmagazine as well, that will focus on more in-depth news and longer human interest stories. 

The addition of the online paper and keeping a more traditional style paper, is a big job, according to Bell, with her newspaper students taking on larger workloads with more deadlines for two different types of publications. 

For Opinion Editor Alex Martin, however, keeping the traditional style paper is worth the effort for him since he enjoys the end result of seeing all his hard work published.

“It’s very satisfying for me,” he said.

Focused on getting the word out to their peers that a new online edition is now available, Editor In Chief Sarah Corcoran says she is hoping that once students realize the information is there, they will get in the habit of reading it.

“It’s information about them and stories that they would be interested in,” she said.