After months of falling into disrepair, the westshoreroar.com website has come roaring back, thanks to the efforts of students in the school’s beginning journalism classes.

“Last year I had only eight Journalism 1 students, this year I have 50,” said Mark Schledorn, student media adviser. “So now that we’re a fourth of the way into the year, I feel like they’re ready to start posting things online. In theory, every week we should have 25 new stories to go on the website.”

Every student in Journalism 1 has chosen a different area throughout the school to follow and write about all year. Having the students writing for the website, so far, has not shown any negatives.

“Personally I found beat reports difficult to write and they took time away from what I really wanted to do, but even though I found them difficult to write, they’re definitely a good teaching tool for getting into other parts of journalism and they’re good foundations to have,” Roar co-editor-in-chief Molly Minta said.

Minta said having the Journalism 1 students writing for the website is a good idea.

“It frees up time for people who aren’t in Journalism 1 or who have already taken Journalism 1 and want to focus most of their time on the newspaper, or the on the yearbook,” she said.

Expectations for the online Roar this year, are high. Schledorn expects the web site to win awards and be among the best in the state as it has been in the past.

“We’re going to a state journalism workshop on Nov. 1,” he said. “By then I want it to be looking like it has looked in the past. I don’t know if there are competitions for it [the website] this year, but when there have been in the past, we’ve usually won.”

By Kelly Batache