I joined the Hook staff in 2021, my sophomore year. It was our first year back from online school. While the paper had maintained an online presence during the pandemic shutdown, we essentially had to start our marketing and reader engagement from scratch. We went from 483 Instagram followers in fall 2021 to 1,229 now. In 2021, we had 17,996 total website views, which grew to 30,131 in 2023.

We spend weeks writing, editing, designing and finalizing pages. But our work doesn’t end when we publish a print issue. Our work is only as powerful as the people who read it, so marketing is extremely important. After distributing newspapers, we create a social media series called “Get Hooked,” in which we post photos of students reading the paper. This is an easy and simple way we connect with the school community and foster engagement. We also take field trips downtown to sell ads to local businesses in person. My junior year, my group sold a full-page ad to the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC), among others. We raised nearly $10,000 through sponsorships this year compared to about $2,000 in the 2020-2021 school year.