From the old black and white paper to the new colorful online website, the journalism students are working to improve the Inklings, the school newspaper.

This year, the Inklings is hosted by School Newspapers Online (SNO). The SNO site allows for improved timeliness as well as for variety in the types of posts. In addition to traditional news and feature articles, students have posted podcasts, live polls, and countdowns.

Seniors Annie Cassutt and Kara Hawker are the most experienced with the website. They both agreed that the switch to the online version was a good change.

Many of the articles on the website are shared with the school’s Facebook and Twitter (@WestDelInklings) immediately after they are posted.

“I think it (the online newspaper) gets a lot more views with it being on social media. It’s fun to see an article get a lot of shares and likes on Facebook,” Cassutt said. “Our goal right now is to get more engaging topics to get people to come look at the site, too.”

“Being as timely as possible and keeping all the people in the school and community updated is a big goal for us,” Hawker said.

“I think it is important because that’s how it is for real life publications like The Gazette and New York Times,” Cassutt said.

With it being student led, some fun little details have been added to make the website more student friendly.

“We’ve done polls on Black Friday vs Cyber Monday and holiday polls on what your favorite movie is,” Cassutt said. “They’re a lot of fun, and I like seeing the results.”

A few podcasts have been posted, too. Junior Holden Smith led a discussion about the election.

“They (senior Sierra Nolz and junior Nolan Monaghan) were trying to explain why they supported the candidate they did,” Smith said. “I think my podcast was very successful.”

Learning by watching videos online, Cassutt teaches herself how to work with the appearance of the page and adds the different widgets that are available.

Senior Haley Lyness also teaches herself by watching videos and researching how to make interesting infographics that add to her article.

“I’m excited to see all the new things we have learned and added to the page at the end of the year,” Lyness said. “Being able to see all of our hard work put onto one page is really cool and makes me feel like I’ve accomplished a lot.”