Uni High Gargoyle Staff Blog

I don’t usually write blog entries because I’m rather busy with the technical side of things, but it’s been in the back of my mind lately to try and write one. I have a few statistics and some news to share that I thought people might be interested in. Here’s a picture from the Online Gargoyle’s backend:

Wow. 847 comments (and a good 150 of those from our recent controversial editorial). We got our first comment over a year ago, couresty of Linda Song (Class of 2008), on a poem of Jackie Hedeman’s. I remember being ecstatic. Of course, back then, we didn’t get the hundreds of spam comments per day that we do now, but that’s OK. We have almost 400 MB of images by now, seven audio slideshows (one soon to be published), and six audio podcasts! We’re really growing.

Anyway, I was prompted to bring all this up by an e-mail I received from Mr. Porreca, the OG’s adviser, at 2:41 this morning (I wasn’t awake at the time). The e-mail was essentially a link to a studentpress.org URL (although the subject was a bit telling: “YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”). If you look at the URL, you’ll see “opm07,” which stands for Online Pacemaker 07.

The Pacemaker is a coveted high school journalism press award; the online version was introduced in 2001. The only reason I’d be getting such an e-mail is if we became finalists for this Online Pacemaker … and so we are. Expect a brief article to appear in the OG shortly, but basically, we’re one of nine schools to receive this honor, and hopefully, we have a chance of being one of the winners (2006 winners). We won’t find out until April, though. Maybe by then we’ll have 1,000 comments. Keep at it, guys!

— Ben Hyman