Running an all-virtual website
When I was tasked as the Online Editor-in-Chief in my junior year, the obvious challenge was having to teach, curate, and improve upon our previous work in a virtual setting as well. I could no longer speak to writers about getting their stories up on the website in class, I had to work with breakout rooms or rely on text messages. Despite, these communicational barriers, with the help of Allison Mi, the now Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Huron Emery, we were able to ensure our daily posting along with redesigning elements and adding multiple new features. This is not to say that it was all difficult. Instantly, with the variety of breaking news due to COVID-19 and school closures and changes, our audience engagement rose (specifics in marketing and engagement). Additionally, we frequented posting from a more diverse slate of pieces– such as podcasts, interactive graphics, videos, and articles spanning various categories. Whether it be reviewing negative comments because of our managing editor Ridhima Kodali’s take on Frozen 2 being the worst movie ever, or viewing our post about Huron Men's Football breaking their 17-year losing streak against cross-town rival Pioneer surpassing 1,000 page views, the website has always been an invaluable experience and a privilege to manage. |
Facilitating interactive stories and multimedia
I helped edit and post a video from a guest writer Joe Wade, about his senior year experience being cut short due to the pandemic. The shot with Joe sitting alone in Huron’s baseball dugout, which he should’ve been given the opportunity to play in as part of his senior baseball season, was powerful and showed him being reminiscent in the way no article could. I used this to shape the way I viewed interactive elements as storytelling tools.
As Online EIC, I felt that our multimedia posts would be the hardest to keep relatively constant, but over my last couple of years, these posts have come naturally. With Eilene Koo and Quinn Newhouse, who produced podcasts such as “Things I didn’t get,” or “The Post Game Podcast,” I listened to every episode in full and communicated any feedback I had. With Mya Georgiadis, Leela Raghevendran, and Aleila Chun-Eliot, I workshopped their “Quick Questions” series to include more diverse groups and be engaging for our audience. The video to the right, premised on interviewing seniors about their college plans, is an idea that Mya came up with and proposed to me, as it deviates from her usual "Quick Questions" format. Regardless, I thought it would make for an excellent change of pace, allowing her to try a different style of reporting. Eventually, the scope of their videos grew. Along with this senior edition, Mya created a junior and sophomore version, while also doing a separate video regarding a Huron BSU (Black Student Union) Spirit Week. Experimenting with new ideas is vital for our multimedia, to gauge how we can use these additional resources and tools to craft influential stories. |
My own online work
PHOTOSTORIES
Whenever I posted photostories I realized how tedious sifting through hundreds of photos is, some not in focus or overexposed, but still needing the patience to find the gems that work. A large part of understanding a news event is seeing it happening, and through photostories, our website can act as a lens for our community. (Click photo for full photostories).
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE ARTICLES
A majority of why our website has been able to flourish, is because of our accurate and comprehensive reporting of breaking news, reaching students, teachers, and other Ann Arbor staff. In these articles, I’ve practiced maximizing my efficiency and straightforwardness in my writing– so that my message and the news are explicitly and accurately reported. (Click photo for articles).
THE PLAYING FIELD
Prior to journalism I was an athlete so I typically wrote a lot of sports, national, collegiate, or high school as part of my column “A Playing Field”– and the website was another ideal place for me to cultivate this interest. It was writing sports, which helped me realize that localizing a story, or forming a more personal connection, was just as meaningful as writing about the professionals. (Photos are all attributed on website, click photo for articles).
Redesigning and reimagining social media
The Communicator’s advisor, Tracy Anderson, taught me that social media is one of the most powerful tools in journalism and that it should be treated as its own publication– not an afterthought. Our old social media content had already received engagement with our intended audience– but at times our content was primarily breaking news. Additionally, it wasn’t sustainable as we posted intermittently instead of following a specific schedule. Knowing this could be a base we build off, and enable our social media to flourish beyond its current scope, I began a complete redesign and rework of our social media structure. We emphasized augmenting our Instagram as our first priority, as it directly translates to Facebook, while maintaining our live-tweeting and major news tweets on our Twitter. On the right is an example feed from our old posts last year. They didn’t have a set structure, so all of them appeared different and inconsistent when compared to one another. In designing set templates I sought to resolve this problem so that when a person sees our posts they immediately know it’s from The Emery.
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Finding inspiration from the professionals
(and the high school professionals too)
Part of any process is finding inspiration and other publications that are highly competent in the subject matter. For our posts, I wanted to develop a professional feel, so I took into account the New York Times and Washington Post design templates. The frequency of their posts along with the type of content they produce are also factors I considered. In addition, I researched local news outlets such as the Detroit Free Press and MLive, along with high school publications with exceptional social media such as FHN Today and The Communicator. FHN Today continues to demonstrate excellence in video production, while the Communicator integrates interesting feature constants (exclusive social media series) such as Fashion Friday. After all, I believe in competing and collaborating, so in meshing what these publications did well I created our design templates. |
Compiling observations into the redesign
My redesign using Canva included numerous intricate elements and varied templates:
-Playfair Display Font, size 56.5 as a headline, right-aligned (Though right-aligned is typically not utilized for text based on design principles, we thought it deviated from other publications and highlighted the originality of our posts).
-IBM Plex Sans, size 24 as a subhead, right-aligned -Series of lines for a modern aesthetic -Different photo/graphic positions (rectangular top right, span full width of the post, entire background, etc.) -Logo in various colors (We didn’t stick to a set color theme as our school colors– forest green and gold– were difficult to work with) -Additional slides would just be other photos of the event, if applicable. -All work would be turned in on Trello, the platform used for submitting our online and in-print work. This decision was consciously made to be easier on our staff. (keep in mind some designs to the right are purely experimental and were altered before use) |
When our work came to fruition
A week after utilizing the design templates, we were able to post at least once every day of the week, and on two certain days, we had three and four posts respectively, without sacrificing the quality of the posts. The analytics alone validated our work which can be further seen in the marketing and engagement tab since all our content is community-minded. Nonetheless, the fact that all these posts had effective designs and solid reporting, revealed to me that my intended structure was working and design templates streamlined our posting process. Final product posts can be viewed below, I published all below except the Washtenaw mask mandate post, which my social media editor Sandra Fu did an amazing job with.
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As can be seen with these examples we place an emphasis on diverse reporting to hopefully cover every Huron student along with informing our community about impactful news.
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My own social media posts
These were all completed before the redesign. Nevertheless, the general content and type of reporting are still consistent with what we try to accomplish in our current posts. I wrote and designed these posts, there are several other posts on our Instagram not pictured where I played a role in the design.
To view more about the effect this redesign had in terms of statistics/analytics please visit the marketing and engagement tab.
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Live-tweeting paired with timely briefs
In 2021, our Men’s Varsity Basketball team reached the state finals, and I was able to comprehensively cover their experience utilizing both our website and social media. I wrote a brief and live-tweeted, receiving heavy engagement from the community. Regardless of the team not coming up with a final win, the experience was invaluable and challenged me to enhance my on-demand reporting skills. (Click image to view brief and click on live-tweets to enlarge below) |