The Eclipse has lasted exactly six months online, and its performance has exceeded even my own expectations.

Before The Eclipse went live, we didn’t have much of an idea of how the paper would go; after all, this is only the first year The Eclipse has been online. Our staff was mostly new to the idea of journalism, and we had only ever written briefs.

Now, our staff proudly boasts nearly 500 published stories. This works out to about 83 stories per month. Whatever happened at the school, The Eclipse was sure to have it covered in a timely manner.

After the new year rolled around, The Eclipse began to submit its articles to Student Newspapers Online’s Best of SNO. We have had many of our stories recognized as some of the finest pieces of journalism in the entire SNO network.

As mentioned in a previous article, The Eclipse has earned several badges, each of which gave the staff confidence in its ability to produce quality journalism:

• Site Excellence: A badge that recognizes The Eclipse as a well-assembled site that minimizes white space, emphasizes images, and puts effort into the finer details.
• Excellence in Writing: A badge that commemorates our third story published on the Best of SNO website.
• Story Page Excellence: A badge affirming that The Eclipse develops each article to the fullest and ensures that the story goes beyond the text to engage the reader.
• Continuous Coverage: A badge showing that The Eclipse updates regularly and demonstrates commitment to ongoing stories and the timeliness of journalism.

The Eclipse has performed exceedingly well in comparison with the other sites utilizing SNO. Of the 58 online high school papers in Michigan, The Eclipse is the only one to have earned four badges. Only three other sites received any badges at all; one site received two badges, and the other two received one badge.

There are 1,660 high schools that boast SNO news sites in America. The Eclipse is one of only 22 other sites that have earned four badges or more. We are literally in the top 1 percent.

The Eclipse staff has grown much more comfortable working on the site over the past few months. Writing articles has become second nature to us; it is not all that uncommon to see a reporter running all over the school to get quotes about an event that happened just that day in order to publish a story about it within the next day or so.

I am exceedingly proud of the job our reporters and editors have done with the site. We’ve raised enough money with this year’s advertisements to pay off next year’s maintenance fees, and we’ve got a head start on upgrading to FLOW, a specially-designed editing program that functions as a workflow diagram put into action.

However, I am most proud of our adviser. As a technology immigrant, Mr. Darrick Puffer had no clue how to operate many parts of the website.

In order to learn it all, he spent hours learning every nook and cranny of the site with Dylan Brewer, Ben Roof, and myself. He is constantly searching out ways to improve the site, our grading system, and the editing process.

I am confident that next year’s team will be much more prepared for The Eclipse than we were due to Puffer’s dedication to the site and the staff.

Thanks to the efforts of our adviser and staff, The Eclipse is ending on a fantastic note. We’ve shot past all of our expectations and set a good precedent for each year of publication to come. I know that this year’s juniors will do a fabulous job running the site next year.

Happy six-month celebration, kearsleyeclipse.com.