Well… it’s here. The September issue of the Little Hawk is upon us. As you thumb through the pages of the most recent issue of one of the nation’s most prestigious high school publications, we, the Little Hawk staff, can only hope for one thing: that we bring to you the most interesting and accurate information about what is happening at your school and in your community. Whether it be the first Little Hawk newspaper you’ve ever laid eyes upon, or one of your last, we hope that we can provide to you the well deserved joy that our newspaper has provided in preceding years. The baton has been passed and now we turn our heads to what we have in front of us. Full speed ahead.

While maintaining the City High staple that is the Little Hawk newspaper, this year we are searching for ways to master another aspect of our game, one that our generation is more familiar with: social media. We realize that around us other publications, ranging from the high school level to those providing news for the whole world, are making pushes for their online media. Just recently, The New York Times had their Innovation Report, coined one of the ‘key documents of this media age’ leaked. This much-too-long-to-read document addresses the difficulties The New York Times, a global leader in news publications, faces in struggling to draw traffic to their website. We feel that we, The Little Hawk, must confront this challenge as well. We seek to improve our website — to better its design, its organization, and to fill it with interesting content in the hopes that we can attract more website hits than ever before. We plan to have an online version of every story we publish and to promote it via Twitter, making it available to everyone at any time. We also aim for complete coverage on City High sports and other events through our social media accounts such as Twitter, Instagram, and possibly Snapchat. Through these apps, we strive to interact more with our audience and create a strong bond between The Little Hawk and its readers. This includes having Little Hawk reporters at all events ready to live stream, upload photos, update scores, and prepare stories as soon as possible. We hope that the school district supports us in new adventures with technology, as it is very important to us to maintain our Pacemaker status. We realize and appreciate the power social media has in the news world today, and we plan to take full advantage of the speed and mass communication that the platform of social media provides.

In this issue, we take on stories that we feel are relevant to our school and community. Reporters contacted local police officers in order to better understand the different angles for our story on racial profiling. Other staff members went out of their way to cover on-campus protests spurred by recent accounts of sexual assault. We yearn to go as in depth as possible into each and every story in order to maximize the quality of the story. As the year progresses, we are making it a top priority to seek out the most intriguing stories and events that are happening around us, even if that means making last second additions the night before deadline. With each new issue, we will strive to make it better than the last in terms of design, photography, and writing.

Hopefully you, our readers, are as excited for the upcoming year as we are. With a strong team composed of talented, experienced writers and motivated, creative newcomers alike, we are thrilled to develop a superb paper as well as a top class website, and along with the assistance of social media, provide you with a reliable and convenient source of ongoing news at The School That Leads.