So you want to bring all this new media stuff to your high school newspaper. Where do you even start? First, you gotta get a website.
While working with some students at a high school in Austin, Texas, I was surprised to hear that they were worried about starting a website because they were so attached to the print newspaper. But you guys are young, I was thinking. You grew up with a mouse in your hand. You’re not supposed to love newspapers. But they do, or they wouldn’t be in a high school newspaper classroom. It took a while to convince them that convergence could mean better journalism in addition to the print edition, not instead. As an aside, I’m glad they love newspapers because that means print journalism has a chance. (Conversely, posts like these, where a high school journalist is worried about an entire program disappearing, make me sad. Let’s reinvigorate high school journalism programs so this doesn’t happen.)
Where to start?
Eventually we set to work on building a website. We experimented, and through trial and error came up with a method that worked best. Today’s important and timely webinar by Paly Voice (pictured above) adviser Paul Kandell for the High School Broadcast Journalism Project confirmed what we found.
A free option
The first thing we tried was the free hosting service through ASNE’s My High School Journalism. It was quick, easy and did I mention free?
Here’s an example of what the site looks like. This is a great service that ASNE provides, but ultimately the students and I agreed that to make the publication their own, they needed a more flexible format. The biggest downside to doing a site on myhsj.org is that you’re limited in design and features. I think of this as a starter site to get students used to posting on the internet and thinking about how they want to design their own site. Apparently a lot of other programs have had the same experience because the first several I clicked on hadn’t been updated in months or even years.
A pricier option
I learned about another site that hosts and designs high school newspaper websites in today’s webinar. I saw the price and was happy we hadn’t been tempted. For a $600 setup fee and $200 a year, schoolnewspapersonline.com will host your newspaper’s website.
This option offers more flexibility by giving a choice of website templates, but the cost is high, and you can set up similar websites through WordPress for a lot less.
A happy medium
Which is what we eventually turned to. WordPress is a publishing platform that’s user-friendly and requires minimum to no knowledge of html coding. But even with WordPress, there are two options, and we tried both.
The first and easiest option is to create a blog on WordPress.com. You choose a theme, or layout, based on the free ones available, and WordPress hosts your site for free. There’s even an option to buy a domain name so you don’t have “WordPress” in the url. Again, this is a great starter site to get students used to updating a website. But again, we were frustrated with the lack of flexibility in designing the site, and most of the free themes available looked too much like blogs for the students’ tastes.
The students ultimately built the site the same way I created this one, by downloading the WordPress software from WordPress.org, buying a domain name for $10, finding a website hosting company to purchase web space (for about $60 a year), and downloading a premium WordPress theme for about $70. (I like the news and magazine themes that Woothemes sells, but you can find them easily by googling “WordPress themes.”) Some are cheaper; some are more expensive. WordPress.org goes into detail about how to find a hosting company and buy a domain, so I won’t bore you about it here. The students’ website is still a work in progress, as is mine, but here’s what theirs looked like shortly after creating the site:
So for about $170 start-up costs and less than $100 a year for the domain and hosting service, you get a quality website with multimedia capabilities, no html required.
If you’ve had a good (or bad) experience with creating a high school newspaper website in another way, please take a moment to share what you’ve learned.
Thanks for the great post, Andrea. I’m sure many advisers will find this to be a terrific resource as they look to take their news publications online.
I do have to add a little bit of information about the services that School Newspapers Online offers, as you comment on our pricing.
When schools sign up with us they get more than just a WordPress theme. We take care of all of the technology — hosting, domain registration, WordPress installation, etc — so that advisers can focus on journalism On top of that, we provide detailed written and video instruction materials and unlimited technical support.
Hi Tom,
Thanks, and I’d love to talk with you at some point about what the company offers. Here’s where I’m coming from: I think it’s an essential resource for schools that have the money and wouldn’t be able to have an online newspaper any other way and want more control over the layout than ASNE’s free service provides. But experience with building a website and using a content-management system is so important for journalists today, that I’d hate for students to miss out on this knowledge, and for advisers to spend more money than necessary, when installing WordPress, etc., can be done fairly easily with some guidance. That said, I don’t know everything there is to know about SNO, and I’m open to having a discussion about it. Thanks for commenting; you’re the first so far! -Andrea
Hi Andrea –
I’m honored to be the first to comment on one of your posts. You’re doing great work here.
We’d be happy to talk any time about what we do and how we do it. For us, it really comes down to removing all barriers to online publishing for journalism programs. Some are able to jump into the technology waters with both feet, but many simply don’t have the time and the resources to take on that challenge. That’s where we can help by providing high-quality themes, web hosting, and unlimited support.
If you’d like to setup a time to talk in more detail, feel free to drop us an email at contact@schoolnewspapersonline.com. We’ll also be in Kansas City for the JEA/NSPA convention in November if you’d like to grab lunch.
Really good post. Your site is inspiring me to do more with my own blog and with another site.
Word Press seems to provide a great deal of flexibility for other types of blogs too, and I do not have a word press blog, but I am hesitant to switch. but it might be time.
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