1. Juggling Your
Online Staff
Jim Streisel, MJE
Carmel (IN) High School
Tuesday, May 1, 12

2. Lots of outlets - limited resources
How do you manage it all?
Tuesday, May 1, 12

3. Make the web an integral
part of what you do.
Introductory classes.
Beat reports.
Web-only stories.
Social media outlets.
Video?
Audio?
Tuesday, May 1, 12

4. Work smarter, not harder.
What do you already do?
Beat reports?
Supplemental video?
Extra photos?
Tuesday, May 1, 12

5. Rethink how you do what
you already do.
Change deadline
structure (A, B and C
deadlines.
Photos of the day.
Hyperlinks?
Tuesday, May 1, 12

6. Staff structure: Simplified
Carmel High School, HiLite
Editor in chief
100+ 4
students Managing editors
students
Page designers Web editors
Writers/
photographers/
graphics
<<CONTENT CODING>>
Tuesday, May 1, 12

7. Staff structure: Complex
Francis Howell North, FHN Today
Tuesday, May 1, 12

8. Content:
The Beat System
Beats editors Space out deadlines
What do they do? Work smarter, not harder
The beats editors’ job entails reading, editing and posting the dozens of beat reports and sports We’ve always written beats, but they used to be
What goes
updates that come in each week. Beats editors (we have five) also determine the newsworthiness of due all at the same time during each print news
each beat, deleting those that are poorly written or not newsworthy and scheduling the newsworthy cycle. Since we moved the beats to the website,
ones to post. we simply shifted our schedule to accommodate
How do they schedule beats to post online? the online venue.
Wordpress allows users to schedule stories to post in the future. Certain beat reports are valid
immediately; however, most refer to events that will happen in the future. Beats editors use the How does the schedule work?
calendar to schedule beats to post closer to when they will be newsworthy. We divided the total number of beats (and
Getting social beat reporters) by three and made A, B and C
online?
Each day, the beats editors also use Twitter to tweet what they consider to be the most newsworthy deadlines over a three-week period. Group A beat
story of the day. reporters have a beat due by Tuesday of Week
1. Group B beats are due the Tuesday of Week
2, and Group C beats are due by the Tuesday of
Where and how do beats appear Week 3. Then we repeat the cycle all over again.
Beat reporters end up writing about four beats
per semester.
A partial list of beats
Cover as much as you can
With a larger staff, you can break your beat
reports into smaller groups. Every club and
Beat reports
activity could be its own beat. For smaller
staffs, you’ll want to consolidate your beats.
For example, instead of having one reporter
cover each academic department, you could
have one reporter simply covering “academic
departments.”
Run by beats/ Newest stories at the top: When readers
Some sample beat areas
English department
School board
Chess Club
Cafeteria
Marching band
Athletic teams
calendar editors
check back, they want an easy way to see the lat- DECA Senior Class
est updates. Make sure you include the date (or
even the time) of each post so readers can see Breakdancing Club Recycling Club
how recent it is. Choir Intramural sports
Orchestra Nat’l Honor Society
Help out the ‘scanners’: Many (most?) readers Student government Key Club
won’t read entire stories, so give those scanners
what they need as quickly as possible. Here, we
Require
provide readers with an informative headline and
part of the lead. Photos of the Day
Similar to written beats
hyperlink, photo
Photographers on staff also participate in the
beat system. Photo editors outline a daily photo
schedule (in our case, a two-week schedule),
and each photographer (we have 10 this year) is
required to take a Photo of the Day on his assigned
day and submit it via e-mail. The photo editor then
posts the photo and cutline to our FlickR account
and to the home page of the website.
Jim Streisel, MJE
Tuesday, May 1, 12

9. Content:
What goes
online?
Online stories
board
Run by
management
team
Tuesday, May 1, 12

10. Content:
What goes
online?
Photo of the day
Run by photo
editors
Tuesday, May 1, 12

11. Content:
What goes
online?
Graphics
‘snapshots’
Run by photo
editors
Tuesday, May 1, 12

12. Twitter
Content:
What goes
online?
Social media
updates Facebook
Run by social
media editor,
management
Tuesday, May 1, 12

13. Content: What goes online?
Videos (weather, supplemental)
Announcements
Photo galleries
Run by management, page editors
Tuesday, May 1, 12

14. What does web staff do?
Coding
Widgets
Troubleshooting
CMS
CSS
HTML
Tuesday, May 1, 12

15. What does the rest
of the staff do?
Content
Content
Content
Tuesday, May 1, 12

16. Make more users…
Many hands make
light work.
You can personalize
user access (admin,
editor, author, etc.)
Tuesday, May 1, 12

17. Contact me…
Jim Streisel, MJE
Jim Streisel, MJE
Carmel (IN) High School
Carmel (IN) High School
jstreise@ccs.k12.in.us
jstreise@ccs.k12.in.us
www.hilite.org/streisel
www.hilite.org/streisel
@CarmelJim
@CarmelJim
Tuesday, May 1, 12