Written by Wyatt Reu |

On Friday, June 5th, 2015, Morgan’s digital newspaper The Morgan Pawprint hit 100k views. This marked a huge milestone for the site which only started a humble 3 years ago. The site was created by 2012 Morgan graduate Evan Doolittle. The first semester the website was designed, it flourished. Within a year, the Pawprint had become not just a school newspaper for Morgan, but a news source read all around the world.

The first article published on the Pawprint was written by Evan Doolittle, and was about hurdlers in the Morgan Track. It featured stories of runners training on slippery, dusty Morgan hallways but coming out on top in competitions against other schools that had tracks for practice. The first article was very well written, and as far as articles go, his was hugely successful.

The PawPrint has published numerous other highly viewed articles such as Chapsticks and Scantrons, written by Senior Justin Escobales when he was a sophomore in which he disproved the commonly believed urban myth that scantron tests can be aced by using a stick of Chapstick to coat the sheet. Since its publication, Justin’s article was viewed over 5,000 times.

Other articles such as Honors vs. College Prep written by Morgan graduate Maria Putnam during the 2012 founding semester of The PawPrint received over 2,000 views.  Remembering Brett Renfrew written by Kristine Adams in June of 2012 received over 900 views during the month it was published.  In the May and June of this year, some of the posts viewed over 100 times in one month include Success! Student Election Results, Vous Allez Nous Manquer, Mrs. Sunny, Clinton Teen Running For President, Where are the Seniors Going Next Year?, and Seniors Give Back Husky Helper Day 2015,

Our site is popular with students, faculty, and even parents. When asked what her favorite article was, Principal Keri Haginess told us, “My favorite articles were on the work that was being done on the new school started by Mike Baker. He was really careful about understanding all of the steps that were being taken to move the project forward and to clarify some things that students and parents wanted to know.”

The PawPrint is a true news-source. Numerous popular articles we have published have been picked up by bigger newspapers such as an article about  Mathew Johnson which was covered by Harbor News and an article about the Morgan Husky vs. UCONN Husky was covered by multiple news sources statewide. The PawPrint also covered Danny Khalifa after he was interviewed by NBC.

The PawPrint has drawn in readers from all across the globe from Sweden to Paraguay to Mongolia, and that’s not to mention our readers from all across the United States. In just three years, our small-town school newspaper became a globally read paper.

Mrs. Haginess shared what she thought the purpose of the PawPrint was: “The purpose of the PawPrint is to gain an awareness of the Morgan culture and of what we value here as well as expressing student opinions. It is a real world application class, and the writers are producers of shared information. Instead of presenting to a teacher, they are presenting it to the world.”

Mrs Hagness also told us that she is proud of the work that the students do, creating thoughtful, well balanced stories, practicing their professionalism in covering different topics.

The staff of the Morgan PawPrint wants to thank you, the viewers, for making our success possible. Without the support of students, teachers and staff at Morgan, one hundred thousand views would have never been possible.