Here in the DC Metro, we are snowed in. Around two feet of snow down already, and it's still coming. We're looking at another 6" - 8" before it stops. The wind is now kicking in, causing major drifting (when I opened my front door to go out and take pictures, I had to wade through snow above my waist).  I'm pretending like we're not on yearbook deadline right now.

What's been interesting to me is watching the local news coverage and reading coverage online.

I've had a few people ask me recently about traffic numbers that scholastic sites are getting. Schools are just wanting a gauge of how their numbers compare. This is a call for those of you with sites to help me out a bit if you can.

Looking for a way to organize your beats on staff to generate online content? We have a few different posts on the site concerning that topic. Here is another one, created by the staff of FHNtoday.com. It’s been evolving for the last two years into what you see today. Katie O’Neil, a junior at Francis Howell North High School who has overseen FHNtoday.com for the past two years and currently serves as the Digial Media class Editor-in-Chief, has shared the staff’s latest version of how their beat system works.

Attachments:

File	Description	File size
Beatshandout.pdf	This is the best sheet used by the staff of FHNtoday.com to explain their system to staffers.	76 Kb

Didn't get to hear the webinar by Paul Kandell, 2009 DJNF Journalism Adviser of the Year? No worries, HSBJ.org has it archived and available for you to listen to. Paul talks about everything from press rights to the future of scholastic journaslim in the webinar titled "2020 Vision: Teaching the New High School Media."

From the State of the Union address to the Grammys, Twitter—and how news organizations use it—continues to amaze me. We’re still figuring it out ourselves here at Whitney Update, but we’re getting the hang of it, so I put together this resource for other staffs hoping to do more with their Twitter presence. Assuming your staff has a Twitter account in place, this handout will walk them (or you) through suggestions for tweeting live event coverage.

Attachments:

File	Description	File size
eventtweet.pdf	This is a PDF handout developed by Sarah Nichols of Whitney High School to help staffs cover live events at school using Twitter.	408 Kb