In an effort to improve the site which hosts Reedsport High School's online newspaper, Braves News Online, my.hsj.org has forgotten a key component of journalism - it's audience.

As a hosting site which is dedicated to high school students who are just learning the journalism trade, my.hsj.org has taken away the ability of student reporters to freely edit their articles. Instead they must retype their articles (or copy and paste from an outside source), submit a new "dummy" article, or ask their advisor to make the necessary changes.

Perhaps the disappointment stems from the unrealistic expectation that students' writing is to be perfect the first time, but whatever the reason, this upgrade from a functional site which promoted good journalism techniques in an online environment to a site which has a lot of flash and little substance is a major downgrade.

You may have noticed that this online newspaper has not been updated recently; while the site update actually only took a couple of days in mid-November, the ramifications of a new site (creating new users, learning the capabilities of the new system, and its drawbacks) have taken a few weeks.

Students at RHS do deserve an online newspaper, and they have had a functional one for the past six years. Some years were better than others, but it worked.

Last year, when the decision was made to go over to my.hsj.org, it was on the premise that it was going to continue to work as it had in the past. For the first quarter of the 2008-09 school year it did, but then the upgrade began in November.

Since then, the weekly routine of writing articles by students of RHS, about the students of RHS, and for the students RHS has ground to a halt, as students have gotten increasingly frustrated by my.hsj.org.

My.hsj.org has promised upgrades in the near future which will remedy many of the drawbacks of the upgrade, including linking issues (the upgrade has derailed external links to established online newspapers by creating lengthy names which make little sense to users), broken links to email staff members, the unusual ability to access other paper's articles, lack of animated GIF support for mastheads, lack of ability to place local ads, decreased control of site appearance, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the inability to use the site as a TEACHING TOOL by allowing students to freely edit their articles.

The Reedsport High School Publications staff encourages my.hsj.org to make the revisions and develop updates quickly, as they have promised to schools across the United States, otherwise the Publications staff at RHS will unfortunately need to revert back to its past online newspapers' design, where students had complete control over the content and structure of the online publication.

Perhaps if enough schools do this, my.hsj.org will once again remember this key component of journalism: if you forget the audience to whom you are speaking, you may soon not have an audience at all.

If you have any questions about this article please contact me at online@rhsnews.org or if you have further comments/questions about my.hsj.org, contact Craig Branson at cbranson@asne.org.