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I’d like to offer you and your journalism class a perfect opportunity to get involved in the real news media. One Bakersfield has come to be one of the fastest growing and largest information directories for Bakersfield over the past year and we’d like to share our exposure with you. We have a news section on our website in which we have created a special high school news page. The only problem is, we don’t have anyone to write stories for it.
We would like to reach out to the excellent journalism departments at the high schools in the Kern High School District to fill this gap. We can provide your students with thousands of Bakersfield and Kern County residents who are eager to read their news stories, free of charge. This can give them valuable insight into reporting and writing for the real world. Each student in your class can be furnished with their own user account with which they can post news stories on our website whenever they please. These articles can be straight from your school newspaper or just short “what’s going on at school” briefs. Extra curricular reports like football coverage, tennis match results, or band competition results would be excellent as well.
We’re also offering a scholarship to those journalism departments and individual reporters participating. At the end of the school year, we’ll look back on the news archives and determine by our set of criteria, which student deserves the award of a $250 scholarship. These are some of the criteria we’ll be judging on:
- Number of times the story has been read by website visitors.
- Rating that the readers have given the story.
- Quality of content and reader appeal.
- Number of contributed stories over the course of the year.
- Use of images / photos in story
- Reader feedback
- feedback from instructors
Another $250 scholarship will be awarded to the journalism department which participates the most (in the above categories) as a whole.
We encourage you to explore our website at www.1bakersfield.com and take a look around our news section. Our news system is built right into the website, which means you won’t need any special software to report your stories. Students can add their news from any computer with internet access. The news system has built-in support for images too, if the students wish to post photographs with their stories.
I am very excited at the opportunity of working with you and your journalism students. If you are interested in our program and would like to talk further or begin the process of setting up your students accounts, please feel free to email me at webmaster@1bakersfield.com or call the One Bakersfield office at (661) 633-1949. We look forward to working with you!
Update: OneBakersfield.com in now part of Google News and your story my be become a part of Google News Google News
SCORING CRITERIA
- Number of times the story has been read by website visitors.
Next to your name is a unique counter “viewed XX time” this keeps track of how many times your story is read by someone. It will only count each computer 1 time (unique visitor count), so make sure to let everyone you know when you post a story. - Reader ratings and cumulative point totals.
Next to the “Viewed XX times” is a Rating System of 1 to 5. Each person reading your story can rate the story from 1 to 5. Points are cumulative; meaning that the more you stories you write, the more reader points you can potentially accumulate toward your overall total. - Quality of content and reader appeal.
Make sure your story is relevant and current. If you write about an event (sporting, concert, play etc) it should have happened within the last 24 hours. The closer to the event time the story is written, the higher the timeliness score. As a goal, the story should be written within an hour of the event’s end, and the content should be informative but not so long that the reader get bored. - Number of contributed stories over the course of the school year.
Again, this is reflected in the cumulative points, which will be a large portion of the rating score. - Use of images and/or photos.
Graphic content counts, so we’ll be looking for writers who use images in their stories. Graphs, pie charts, etc. can be used to illustrate your point in many cases. If you have a digital camera and can take great photos of relevant topics, it’s even better. - Reader feedback.
If your writing encourages a reaction from the reader, they are much more likely to remember you and the story. Encourage your readers in the content to leave comments as these will be used to further evaluate your point totals. - Feedback from instructors.
We will visit the instructors of contest finalists to further evaluate eligibility. Make sure your instructors are aware of your goals, and obtain their continued support of your endeavor.
To apply to become a news reporter: Click Here
Sincerely,
Kyle Brown
One Bakersfield Owner
