The Sugar Beet has consistently been a hardcopy publication, with limited resources preventing a digital version of the Sugar Beet. However, a new opportunity has been given to the publications team to run a new website.
“It allows us more flexibility for parts of publication,” David Ordonez, Trade senior and website manager, said. “We can upload Buff TV episodes there, we can have a place so purchasing a yearbook is more streamlined and it also allows us to have another place for advertisements.”
A previous website has been in service before. The manager responsible for the website wanted to update the website, but it was never relaunched.
“The online editor wanted to take the website down and relaunch it,” Brian Nelson, publications adviser, said. “It was taken down in 2017, but it was never put back up.”
Since the shutdown, there were few attempts to revitalize the website. The primary concern was the necessary funding.
“There really have not been attempts to get a website back up,” Nelson said. “There has been discussion, but funding was not in place.”
Eventually, the school was able to allocate resources for the publications team to revive and run the website.
“We ended up discussing it with the CTE coordinator at the school,” Nelson said. “She helped us figure out the funding.”
The website is hosted by SNO Sites, the primary provider for WordPress and publications websites. The latest trip to the Journalism Education Association conference in Nashville introduced the team to SNO Sites, providing the necessary tools to rejuvenate and run the website.
“Hosting through SNO Sites, which allows us to have not our own servers hosting it, but another source hosting it so that it is less of a burden on us,” Ordonez said.
A digital newspaper reaps many advantages for the team. Hardcopy papers are costly to print, but publishing stories on the website is not only cheap but also efficient.
“We are not confined by size because on the physical edition of the Sugar Beet, every inch of the paper costs money,” Ordonez said. “While on the digital version, you can write as many words as you possibly want and have as many photos.”
Additionally, a website allows for both hardcopy and website-exclusive stories to be published, proliferating more stories from the team.
“We have this board in our classroom that we write all the stories on,” Ordonez said.” Now that we have a website, we are still going to put all those stories onto the website, but we now have an additional page which is website-only.”
With the comeback of a publications website, it brings more efficiency into the workspace while paving an additional vector for promoting the high school’s publication, leaving future staff members to be able to utilize, manage and even innovate with the website.
“There have been days where I put two or three hours in,” Ordonez said. “It is not hard work, it is just very tedious, but it is one of my senior goals I gave myself this year to leave something behind that future Sugar Beeters are going to rely on.”
