Four graduate students from DePaul University's journalism program have spent the last few weeks contributing content to Sloopin and working to increase site traffic as part of a group project focused on digital news strategy.
Samantha Steiner, Julie Harris, Laura Fitzgerald, and Clarissa Fidler are students in Professor Lou Rutigliano's journalism course, "News Now: Journalism in the Information Age". The course—part of the journalism program's core curriculum—is designed to critically examine issues faced by today's news media.
For their group project, Samantha, Laura, Clarissa, and Julie have each taken turns writing Sloopin blog posts, adding photos to Shots Around the Sloop, and commenting on posts via Facebook and the Sloopin site itself. Their main goals have been to bring more readers to the site via social media and engage readers through post comments.
The internet has allowed for a major increase in the number of news outlets available to the public. However, a select handful of sites continue to dominate online traffic while often neglecting localized news coverage. As a result, smaller news sites often struggle to build an audience.
Sites like ours provide a way for residents to network together and become invested in their community. Engaging individuals at a local level is an important component to news media's successful future.
Here at Sloopin we are dedicated to bringing you all that is and could be life in the South Loop. We value you as our readers and hope to continue to find ways to bring you pertinent information you won't find anywhere else.
A special Sloopin hat tip to Samantha, Julie, Laura, and Clarissa for their help and contributions to our site and community! Best of luck!
(Image from depauledgradtalk.org)
(Image from depauledgradtalk.org)
