By Nathan Yan
Thursday, April 20, 2006 1:49 AM

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The quick summary:

• We're starting a blog project.
• Everyone's invited to write.
• Meeting Tuesday, April 25th, afterschool in Room 411 in the Math Hallway

Contact Nathan Yan for more information, or if you can't make the meeting
westmoorgoldenram@yahoo.com
AIM, Google, Yahoo, MSN: TejasTheory
Room 411 most lunches and afterschool

Write well? Get a blogjob!

If you're interested in writing... journalistically, argumenatively, expositively, entertainingly, absurdly - here's your chance.

The Westmoor News Blog, in conjunction with the Journalism Club and the Flask Server Project, is launching a Westmoor blogosphere project, to bring back the Golden Ram in a fully integrated online blog form, and expand the writing and journalistic opportunities available to Westmoor students.

Generalized mission statement aside, what's really going to happen? The plan currently is to allow students to write articles (on any subject) and post them on the Golden Ram blog site. The actual blogs will come in two types: collaborative blogs, centered around a general topic, to which many writers' pieces will go to, and individual blogs, mainly intended for columnists, which will be entirely written on by individual writers, hopefully on a regular basis.

Much like the Westmoor News Blog currently, writing and posting will be handled entirely through Blogger, which should provide easy and instant 24-hour access for writers. Blogger will also allow a large degree of customizability in terms of stylesheets and HTML layout. Students will also be able to use the Flask Server as a host for media and other kinds of files for the weblogs. If you're not all that tech-savvy, don't worry about it; we've got people who can completely handle the technical aspects of upkeeping the site. The main goal for everyone is to write, publish, and share among the student body.

Like the real blogosphere, writing here is virtually carte blanche. Westmoor reader base has a wide and varying scope of interests, and I'm hoping that writers will too. The online blog project is open to any and every subject matter (with of course, common-sense appropriateness for students), and you can write as much or as little as you like - as a daily columnist or reporter on the going-ons of Westmoor, or simply submit a one-time article on a issue that especially piqued your interest. Of course, other editors and I will be available to work closely with all writers on developing themes, general subjects, and helping with story ideas and writing style. Just like a print newspaper, every article will still be overviewed by editors, and we'll suggest what edits and improvements we think might be able to improve articles.

A general outline of the plan (my own) and the kind of writing and blogs I'd like to see for the blog project, although in the end it will be whatever students and writers make out of it:

• An expansion of the current Westmoor News Blog, to include a much more comprehensive coverage of school activities and student life. In particular, I'd love to get some active members of Westmoor athletic teams and student organizations, to update on recaps of games, student events, as well as the ongoing progress of teams' seasons and club activities.
• A slew of column writers. I know as far as "blogs" and "teenagers" go, the general perception is a stream of depressing, angry, attention me! posts about how their days went and how horrible and miserable life is. Rest assured, reading public, that nothing of that kind will be part of the blog project. Columnists will be regular writers, who have a blog all to their own. Oftentimes blogs provide commentary on a specific topic or subject area, but you'll also often see general ponderings of life and absurd nonsense. Columns are often the most creative and flexible outlets of writing, and I'm anticipating that most of the blogs will likely come in this form.
• Opinion. As growing and developing teenagers, throughout high school students progressively grow more and more aware of their surroundings, and the greater world. Beyond that, students begin to form opinions and conclusion. The problem currently is: there is no outlet for thoughts and opinions, aside from social science class debates (not all planned) and those annual student walk-outs (I can't believe we didn't get Cesar Chavez day off!). Opinion articles not only give students the opportunity to speak out on their views and beliefs, but prompts the entire reading body to confront, consider, and develop conclusions on issues themselves, and stimulates feedback and interaction in the form of comment threads.
• Photojournalism. As some of you have no doubt noticed on this newsblog, a significant portion of the coverage on events and stories at Westmoor come not in the form of written articles, but in photostreams. This is due partly to my own inability to cover events in their entirety, but in itself photostreams have their own merit. Photostreams are much easier to produce than the reporting effort needed to cover stories comprehensively, and even then, many stories are best covered not with words, but with images, which give viewers a much greater sense of scenes and what's really going on. A lot of the time, they're also a lot more entertaining and engaging to readers than reading through pages upon pages of drab and needlessly complex text.
• Streaming media. Beyond photojournalism, the capabilities of online sites allow for a much more powerful and dynamic range of media that print journalism could never hope to achieve. I've made some attempts of my own at providing video coverage on some events, hosted and streamed from the Flask Server, and there is certainly a huge potential to develop video coverage and audio records of events for those with the equipment and technical know-how. For anyone with a camcorder (analog or digital), video can cover pretty much any event, but sports and assemblies or presentations in particular are well-suited to the medium. If you happen to have an audio recording device, I've been itching to get recordings of the band concerts, and possibly start a regular and ongoing podcast.

We'll have a meeting this Tuesday April 25th afterschool, in Room 411 in the math hallway (for those of you who have been around long enough, the "Journalism Room"), to explain the project, answer questions, and get started on setting up writers to work on covering events and writing articles. If you can't make it to the meeting, drop by Room 411 or contact Nathan Yan (contact info at the top).

The Westmoor News Blog is a weblog which updates on current events and news going on at Westmoor. It is written entirely by students, and thus any and all views, ideas, and witticisms expressed here do not necessarily correlate to those of Westmoor High School or JUHSD. You can submit feedback by emailing us at westmoorgoldenram@yahoo.com

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