Four weeks, countless how-to videos, and 11,000+ lines of code in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript… this is what it took to fully redesign The Talon. I took an interest in Computer Science during the pandemic when I had a lot of time on my hands; during that time, I simply wanted to know how programming and software worked. The culmination of that interest finally blossomed with the creation of this website. While the old software the school district uses to create their online content is functional, there were a couple of problems with it overall.

The first issue with the old Talon, in my opinion, was that it took 4–5 steps to create a single article, let alone the entire newspaper. Between those steps, slow loading times, constant edits, and clunky mechanics bogged down any sense of efficiency. The Talon is now designed to be almost automatic with font selection, font size, paragraph indentation, picture implementation, and more. It used to take me ten minutes to upload a completed article in the old system; now, it takes about 2–3 minutes. When there are 10–12 articles in any given publication, that time really adds up.

The second (and perhaps most important) issue was the stranglehold the old software had on creativity. There was not much I could do other than paste text for readers to view. With the new Talon, while the articles function similarly, there is so much more to this online publication than ever before. I designed a bot to scrape relevant and current news across the internet to publish in the new Talon Brief. The Talon Brief will update daily, so even between publications, news can be read at any time. I was also able to implement a breaking news section that updates with the latest events at Flagstaff High School. One really cool function I added to the pages is a weather button that pulls data from an API to show the current forecast and the outlook for the next five days.

I was able to bring a little bit of the New York Times into The Talon with crossword puzzles, a Wordle clone (called Eagle for copyright reasons), and an original game I designed called Password. I’m a big fan of trivia, and some of my favorite categories are the ones where each question provides a hint about the overall theme of the round. That is essentially what Password is.

I am excited to grow The Talon for another year, as we have made awesome progress throughout this term. I would like to thank my editors and writers for all the success they have achieved this year. I would also like to thank the countless readers who have supported our writing. Publication means nothing without an audience, and as I tally up the current reads on the old Talon, there are over 20,000 individual visits across the various pages and articles already published.

As I wrap up this article, I would like to share some plans for the future. Selling advertisement space will be our biggest goal going into next school year. With that revenue, we will be able to buy equipment specifically for journalism and attend various journalistic conferences around the country. Finally, there are ideas for creating an app and hosting guest speakers. I am excited for the future of this program, and if you want to be a part of this growth, I encourage you to take Journalism next year!