Using different web tools to create the story is something that I have done a ton as the Web Editor-in-Chief. Our publication is a SNO site, and I have utilized many of their features including long-forms, infoboxes, and widget panels. Overall, each entry challenged me on what I know about SNO and I am a better web designer because of all my entries. From getting SNO Distinguished Site on Halloween and reformatting our website, I have had a lot of web designing experience. Check out the entries below to see what I have accomplished.
Getting the third SNO Distinguished Site in the nation
I wanted to do something ambitious to start my senior year. Granted, my senior was going to be my first and only year as an editor-in-chief, so experience was relatively limited. But, I really wanted to do something special for wlhsNOW, which in my eyes, was going for that SNO Distinguished Site moniker as fast as we can. This goal, led by me, was a success. wlhsNOW got SNO Distinguished on October 31st, third in the nation. I wanted wlhsNOW to be recognized on some kind of national level, and I got what I wanted. Here is the whole rundown.
Planning was the first focus point. Every August, our staff leaders go on an editorial retreat on the coast to plan out our journalism agenda. One of the things I wanted to focus on was building up a plan for SNO Distinguished Site, among other things. Our board talked about it, but I really devised a plan myself to pitch to the board to see if they were okay with going forth with this project. The board was on board. I mapped out what reaching the SNO Distinguished Site could look like and I made a specific goal doc to make sure we have all the content to meet the criteria.
To help with keeping people on the same page, I also added comments for any extra needed information. I made sure to pay attention to the small details so something doesn’t fall through the cracks, or something is late, or something just isn’t good enough. Little steps of communication helped the quality control when going for the Distinguished Site. Here are a few other strategies I utilized when going for SNO Distinguished Site.
- Doing things myself. Sometimes, I have to just make the content for the requirements. Yes, I did do the Site Excellence Badge myself, but I also helped with the Multimedia Badge and the Continuous Coverage Badge. I also led a couple sports media days to help meet requirements for the Story Page Excellence Badge. I also find it necessary to lead by example.
- Deliberate story assignments. During our class brainstorms, we made sure we took the SNO Distinguished Site requirements into account. The board and I wanted to make sure that the SNO Distinguished flows with the class’ flows.
- Trust. My leadership philosophy relies on trusting my staff members to do the things they said they would do. This proved crucial. For example, the Audience Engagement badge was solely completed by Molly Lundstrom, the social media editor.
- Discipline. A long-going project could become boring after a while. It most definitely did for us because it felt like it was never going to end. However, me, and the board, had discipline with this project. I showed discipline through my ability to have constant communication.
There were many obstacles in completing SNO’s big prize and it ultimately challenged us as a staff. Making sure we had all the requirements for the Multimedia Badge proved tough and figuring out widgets and layouts was at first tough for me to figure out for the Site Excellence Badge. However, our board pulled through. Through constant communication in our board meetings, and listening to see what others think, it was a project that I’m very grateful I led.
Reformatting a SNO website
Before
I think wlhsNOW needed a look-over. After doing the Site Excellence Badge for SNO Distinguished Site, I knew that some things needed to be changed for our original site because once I completed the requirements for the Site Excellence badge, I saw that the website design was better than our original designs.
So, I went to adjust the widgets layout. This was a longer process because most of our content widgets were clumped to one section so I learned how to spread all the widgets out. I did this because I wanted to experiment and also make it flexible for the future web editors. Below, you can see the before and after of adjusting the widgets. You can see the balance and how I utilized three columns at the bottom, which is something that was untouched.
Adjusting these widgets created a lot of structural changes to the website, though these changes were done with a ton of thought. When I made these changes, we were recently critiqued by another journalism adviser about our website. He gave us a lot of good advice and I was eager to make those changes right away. So, here are the main changes I made.
- Top story showcase. I changed the top stories section to show up a bit more flat and shorter. Having a slimmer top story area makes it more eye-catching since the viewer can see the content after the top story section sooner.
- Adding “Recent Stories”. I added an extra section that went across horizontally right under the top story section. These were relevant stories but aren’t juicy enough to be at the very top.
- Making the Instagram panel smaller. One of the critiques we got at the 2024 fall JEA/NSPA convention was to make the Instagram panel less intrusive. This made sense because Instagram isn’t the primary focus of the website itself. However, it is still very important to keep, so I moved it off to the side, taking up a 1/3 of the page instead of 2/3 of the page.
- Adding a flip book feature. Tying in the most recent Amplifier with the website is something I really wanted to do because the Amplifier is something we work really hard on as well. So, I made sure to have the Amplifier flip book to have a large section of the website.
- Adding sports scores. As a little extra feature, I added some sports scores. This gave extra useful information and gave a change of pace to the website layout.
- Moving the SNO Distinguished Site banner lower. This was another critique we got at the 2024 fall JEA/NSPA Convention. It was a big accomplishment but as a publication, our number one job is to prioritize the news. This means we had to lower the banner lower in order to prioritize the news.
- Moving the current events section. I moved the current events section so that it can be stretched across the page. I did this so that there wasn’t any empty space.
- Using a three-column layout. I made the multimedia section smaller so that it can be in equal size with the trending stories and the Best of SNO panel. I wanted to do some experimentation with this and I got something that looked symmetrical.
- Moving the “Meet the Staff” section. As I said in the SNO Distinguished Site point, our priority is the news, so that’s why I lowered this section to the very bottom of the website. I made it fully horizontal so there wasn’t any empty space.
After
Utilizing different SNO story page formats
Throughout my time as the Web Editor-in-Chief, I have gotten the chance to try a variety of story page techniques to enhance a story. Templates I have tried in the past are all of them, because I made sure we had all the content we needed for all the templates, since we needed to get the Story Page Excellence Badge.
Our standard publication story page template is full width. I have us do this because it’s simpler for all staff members to learn because my goal as the Web Editor-in-Chief is to also teach others how to use SNO. When weighing the opportunity cost with using sidebars and risking making things complicated for our new staff, I thought this was the best choice for our staff.
Since we had a couple of sports media days at the start of our year, this was a good opportunity to use SNO’s new long forms. In the past, I’ve used the grids option to convey the sports media day content, which you can see at the very bottom of this entry. Unfortunately, this story page template doesn’t exist anymore, so I had to transition into using SNO’s new long form templates. After experimenting with the segments and deciding how the media day-style long form looked like, I learned how useful the new SNO long forms were. These long forms create a more interactive experience when reading the content, which is perfect for media day profiles because my goal with them is make it seem like you are meeting the player.
Another SNO feature I’ve gotten comfortable using are infoboxes. When formatting the annual club guide, I wanted to try this feature out because we needed to have an infobox for the Story Page Excellence Badge. Figuring out which infobox template was difficult because there were a few options and I didn’t know what option suited best for the club guide. I chose the accordion style infobox because it fit best with the amount of words and photos each box had. Since the infobox had so much information in a concise style, SNO shouted us out. During one of SNO’s sessions at the 2023 fall JEA/NSPA convention at Boston, they also showed my infobox on their slideshow.
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