App joins online newspaper
Falcon readers can now follow the newspaper through the Student News Source app.
September 12, 2019
The Falcon student newspaper is now hosted by Student Newspaper Online, or SNO, which provides online and mobile publishing platforms for schools.
Starting this year, students can also read articles published by The Falcon on their mobile devices.
“I would probably read the newspaper more, but if I was in the online one, I would read it,” Walker Bruce said.
In the past, students have been able to read articles on the website, but this year the journalism team is trying harder to be “digital first.”
“While Kinkaid’s newspaper has had an online presence for a while, the website has been used as shovelware, which means that we have typically pushed the stories in print to our online platform,” said Dr. Kimetris Baltrip, journalism teacher. “Adopting a digital first mindset means our website will be the first and primary source for news and information and our newspaper becomes a product for feature coverage.”
Digital first for the journalism class also means students can download the Student News Source app from the app store or Google Play and follow The Falcon student newspaper. Once the app is downloaded, students can enter “Kinkaid” in the search tab and simply click on “The Kinkaid School.”
The digital first mindset has also had effects on the printed newspaper. The size of The Falcon has been reduced from 24 to 20 pages. This change happened for two reasons: the journalism team can spend more time on each issue and have more time to work on online stories.
“It was way too stressful with 24 pages,” said Megha Neelapu, Deputy Editor.
Some students enjoy hard copies of the newspaper and others prefer to read online.
“I enjoy reading online more,” sophomore Sam Pitts said.
Although Pitts said he likes reading The Falcon’s website, freshman Johnny Griggs was asked if he could choose between the two, his choice would be “probably newspaper.”
