(photo by Dustin Simoneaux)
The Paper Wolf has now released of an app version of their publication on Android to better help readers navigate to the site, and is looking to release the app on Apple iOS some time next year.
“We’re going into our fourth year as a digital newspaper,” said Paper Wolf moderator Christi Simoneaux. “Although the majority of the lowerclassmen have subscribed to The Paper Wolf and go to the site on a regular basis, some of the older students still remember the printed version and are not as apt to go to the website and think of it as a viable news source.”
The Paper Wolf Mobile app is meant to alleviate this problem. With many of the upperclassmen using social media to get their news, The Paper Wolf Mobile app is a plan to bridge the gap between newspaper and social media to get the entire student body involved in the publication.
“I believe that with a mobile app reader, we will be able to get more upperclassmen to use The Paper Wolf and subscribe to the site for all their St. Paul’s news needs,” Simoneaux said.
The Paper Wolf Mobile app was created and is run by by St. Paul’s senior Dustin Simoneaux, who is currently learning programming in the school’s Computer Science and Software Engineering class. As the publication’s Social Media Director for the previous school year, Dustin created this app in an effort to expand The Paper Wolf’s readership exponentially among St. Paul’s students and alumni.
“The Paper Wolf is becoming more and more popular,” app developer Dustin Simoneaux said,”and with social media becoming a very common thing amongst people in today’s day and age, I decided that The Paper Wolf sorely needed an app to reach more people.”
The current version of the app is a modified reader that gives users immediate access to the news site with drop down menus and a search bar.
“The Paper Wolf app is a web viewer, meaning when you look in the app it allows you to see an optimized version of The Paper Wolf site in real time from your device,” said Dustin Simoneaux, “You can send comments and reply just like you can on the original site, because student interaction is always highly sought after. The primary benefit is that users won’t have to open a web browser and search for the publication, simply open the app instead.”
Future updates are in the works, with plans to add a push-notification feature when new articles publish. The Paper Wolf also welcomes requests for additional features.
“(The app) will be updated based on the feedback it receives from students,” said Dustin Simoneaux, “meaning that depending on how the student body reacts to the app alters how the app is going to preform in the future. We at The Paper Wolf hope this will lead to a better reader experience.”
As of now, the publication is only available on the Google Play store, but it is working on an Apple release that should be available sometime next year.
The Paper Wolf 