What’s the point of a newspaper if no one reads it?

A newspaper is kind of like a mansion, each room being a different article. There are many things to look at and people go from room to room, eventually getting lost in their own discoveries. What’s the point of a mansion if no one goes in it? If no one notices it?

What we write in journalism is good stuff. It’s not fair to have it go unnoticed or what’s more, uncared for by the students it’s written for. So why don’t we change that?? Why don’t we expand our advertising to bring in the viewers? There are a couple ways that I think might help attract the students and faculty of Horizon. We could put a quick synopsis of a couple relevant-to-the-student articles (like Campus Life or Sports articles) in the announcements! Or maybe even put the Weekly Recap in the announcements, either at the end of the week of the beginning of the next week! I know for a fact that not many students outside of Journalism class know about the Horizon Sun. Even this smallest amount of exposure to it via the announcements could be enough to strike up enough interest in them to at least check out the Horizon Sun website. But this would only help the “unnoticed” part of the problem.

To take care of the “uncared for” part, we need to focus on content that appeals to the audience. We already know that everyone these days, students and adults, are attracted to things that are about themselves. For this, there’s a couple of things we could do! Use more pictures of actual students and staff members to go along with articles, then spotlight those pictures on the website homepage. Let’s face it, more people will be tempted to click on a picture of someone they know, rather than a ripped Amazon sign or a closeup of a book. Along with more pictures of people, we need more stories about the people. Maybe we could assign more Student/Campus Life articles and less Features and Extras? Also when I first joined this class I thought Student Opinion was when a journalist would interview a non-journalism student and write an article about an opinion that the interviewed-student had. Maybe we could try something like that? Or do like a class poll article, and talk about an opinion that a large group of students have. Lastly if there’s nothing really exciting going around school, I think it would be a good idea to turn to social media for ideas for stories. If you need something to write about that will interest other students, go look at what people are talking about on Twitter or Facebook. Twitter always has subjects that are trending worldwide, and trending in each state too. We can use those popular, viral topics and write about them on the Horizon Sun.

While these ideas won’t solve the problems immediately, they might help to fix them gradually. I just ask that you take these ideas into consideration, to benefit the Horizon Sun and the journalists that represent it. After all, what’s the point of a newspaper if no one reads it?