Website designer Cindy Royal says the question for high school journalism
advisers is not when to take their programs to the Internet, but how to get started
immediately.
 
“You want to go where people are,” said Royal, an assistant professor at Texas
State University’s, School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “And let’s face it,
most teens aren’t picking up papers.”
 
Royal told a gathering of 33 advisers from across the United States attending
ASNE’s Reynolds High School Journalism Institute, “not only do you show students
the future, you generate a passion for and an interest in a career that might be
dying otherwise.”
 
The Institute was held June 20 through July 2 at the University of Texas at Austin.
 
Royal, who gained Web designing skills more than a decade ago by “jumping right
in” to build a personal site, encouraged advisers to gain these skills to share with
their students, some of whom might be thinking of journalism as a profession.
 
Print journalism has suffered catastrophic losses in the past couple of years.
According to businessinsider.com, 105 newspapers were closed in 2009, with another
60 or so on the block in 2010. The same site reported that more than 10,000
professional journalists were cast into the job market through March 2010.
 
Drew Marcks, assistant managing editor at the Austin American-Statesman,
credits this decline to dwindling advertising sales and a shift in readership habits:
“You have to deliver the news in the format people want it, and that means a
mixture of online and print. We’ve been morphing for a long time – our reporters
carry cameras, are used to getting videos and audio, and are ready to write for the
Web – it’s a fundamental change of platform,”  he said.
 
Royal encouraged advisers to begin to make that shift through learning HTML
(hypertext mark-up language), a code that directs the design of Web pages, to
position themselves not only to “see” how it works but also to be able to fix or tweak
pages themselves.
 
“HTML is the foundation of anything that’s on the Web. Even if you use a CMS
[content management system], it’s still what runs the Web,” she said. “Through
learning the basics of HTML, you can understand how it works and customize it to
meet your individual needs.”
 
Royal suggested three ways advisers could create a presence on the Web: 1)
ASNE’s myhsj.org, a CMS with some design flexibility; 2) hosting sites such as
schoolnewsonline.com that allow customization with some support; or 3) self-hosting
with no support.
 
“The biggest benefits of ASNE’s myhsj.org are that it’s free, it’s easy, and it’s
relatively customizable. It hosts video and has nice functionality with photos. It also
continues to improve,” Royal said.
 
Sites like schoolnewsonline.com use WordPress as a base and cost $400 to $600 to
startup, then $200 a year to maintain. “This could be a value depending on what you
want students to learn,” Royal said. “This is a great way to go if part of your goal is
to give students Web designing skills.”
 
Hosting your own site, using Godaddy or Bluehost, allows the most control over
Web design, Royal said. “It’s a more robust opportunity, and costs only $7 to $10 a
year.”
 
Because each school’s needs and financial capabilities are different, Royal stressed
there’s no “best choice” when it comes to creating a Web presence. “There’s nothing
that should stop an adviser from doing this,” she said. “It’s easy and relatively
inexpensive.”

Cindy Royal instructed the ASNE fellows in basic HTML, and the group began to create rudimentary websites of their own.
 
Doug Moser, a teacher at Mountainair Senior High School in Mountainair, N.M., said he found the
HTML instruction insightful. “I’ve built two websites so far and didn’t know how to do it from scratch. This explained what I have been doing,” he said. “My next step is to create one for myself – my wife and I want to provide resources for my students.”
 
Rebecca Paul, a journalism adviser from Fountainebleau High School in Mandeville, La., wasn’t as
eager to get started with HTML. “I did learn a lot of things,” she said, “but I’m not very technically
proficient.”
 
Paul said she plans to post her students’ work at least once per quarter. “More than anything, I
overcame some of my phobia,” she said.
 
Ashley Durham, a journalism adviser at brand-new Bingham High School in South Jordan, Utah, said HTML was “a lot easier” to understand  than she had imagined.
 
“I liked the hands-on aspect of it,” she said. “Normally it’s not something I’d be interested in, but I am; it’s cool.”