The Rider Online is a daily updated publication from students at Mansfield Legacy High School. Legacy High School opened in 2007 as Mansfield ISD’s fourth high school. We’re located on a former rodeo arena near downtown Mansfield, Texas- just south of Arlington. We currenlty have 2,400 students. During the last two years, The Rider (print edition) has been nominated for a Star Award from the Interscholastic League Press Conference.  Legacy High School won the district UIL team points for UIL’s four journalism writing events in 2008 and 2009. Our goal and number one mission is to tell the stories within Legacy High School and give information to our students, parents, community and whoever else cares.

therideronline.com became real in 2009 after a year of studies, tests and many failures! With the teamwork of journalism adviser Leland Mallett, broadcast teacher Jim Cockrell, former Southwest Airlines web designer Melanie Stillings (now at Ben Barber Career Tech Center) and 24 lost, dazed and confused students began drawing up ideas for the site in August of 2008. After knowing what the site needed to look like, the content that would drive the site and the tone of the content, design began. Call us for a list of software and CMSs that didn’t work out for us. There were a lot. We finally fell in love with WordPress and marched forward. However, we realized it was easy to get out of step. We contacted Tom and Jason from www.schoolnewspapersonline.com and asked for help. We really didn’t want any outside help. We wanted it to be all us. But we realized that back-in-the-day student journalists didn’t create the Apple computer or Aldus PageMaker. It’s the content that really matters. So it’s been great to have help from ol’ Tom and Jason. We worry more about the stories we tell than the PHP aligning with the JavaScript. (We’re not even sure what that means.)

We thenlearned that we won a MISD Foundation Grant for $10,000 to build a podcasting studio. Opening all those boxes in March was better than Christmas. HD cameras, teleprompters, cords, mics, buttons to push, lights, backdrops. We now have the help of our Tech Theatre class to build a sweet set for weekly news podcast for LBTV.

Speaking of grants, (are you still reading about us? We could go on and on, you know) we’ve submitted another grant to have an iPhone app built for the site along with two iPhones to report from the field with. Mallett likes to think of it as “real world journalism,” but we really just wanted to Tweet from games.

We want this site to be about you and for you. (Sounds cliche. We know.) We check the number of hits daily. We figure if no one is looking at what we’re writing, why write it write. So tell us what you think. We welcome your comments, photos, videos, news tips and critiques (if you’re nice about them) at any time. See our CONTRIBUTE page to send stuff.

 

Follow us on YouTube: therideronline

www.twitter.com/therideronline |  http://vimeo.com/user1533963 |  www.facebook.com/legacyjournalism

FACTS ABOUT US

-Legacy’s online newspaper is student run and operated by Legacy journalism students with assistance from adviser Leland Mallett and broadcast teacher Jim Cockrell

-Melanie Stillings at Ben Barber Career Tech Academy also helped in the launch of the site in April of 2009.

-Students working on the online edition also write and produce the school’s yearbook and print edition of The Rider

-The site is updated everyday. Check the recent posts on our home page for a quick link to the latest postings.

-During the summer we post personality features and news updates.

-During its first two weeks of activity, therideronline had over 2,000 hits.

-There are currently 290 Twitter followers. (Hopefully this number is now outdated.)

-Content on therideronline is managed by WordPress

-The site design is by Legacy Student Media students coding and other technical assistance is provided by schoolnewspapersonline.com