For the first time in school history, Germantown Academy’s student-led newspaper, The Edition, will be accessible through a mobile app.
The Edition is one of the oldest student-led newspapers in the country, producing content that ranges from school-wide to world-wide contexts. In the past, the organization has published anywhere between five to seven tangible newspapers throughout the school year. The organization also uploads all written articles to its public, student-run website.
However, several aspects of The Edition are evolving. The organization doubled its staff size compared to last school year, and its new leadership is turning to technology to boost its impact on its student body.
“Even before I became an Editor-in-Chief, I had tried to lead several web-based projects that aimed to increase interactions between students and The Edition,” Editor-in-Chief (EIC) Aidan Gor ‘25 said. “However, many of those projects never came to fruition.”
After being promoted to EIC at the end of his junior year, Gor lobbied the idea of a centralized mobile app that students, faculty and staff could utilize to view the content of The Edition in a more accessible way, without thinking of any specific logistics for the time being.
“I knew that the new web team consisted of some of the best software developers at our school, and I knew that if I wanted to execute that idea of the mobile app, they would be my best shot,” Gor said.
Because it was so late into the school year, Gor and other EICs Taryn DiFranco ‘25, Utsav Mittal ‘25, and Larry Zhan ‘25 decided to set aside the multi-month project until the following school year.
However, one then-sophomore didn’t feel like waiting.
Nathan George ‘26 joined the organization at the end of the 2023-2024 school year as a web editor. Hearing about the idea of a mobile app, George decided to use his advanced app development skills to take the initiative himself.
“Over the summer, I just developed an initial prototype of the app as kind of a surprise,” George said. “I decided to make the app because I wanted our team to get a head-start on the app development process.”
George completed a year-long project in just two months. At the start of the 2024-2025 school year, George presented the prototype to Gor.
“This wasn’t just an ‘initial prototype’–it was basically 80% of the entire app completed,” Gor said. “Keep in mind, the job of a web editor is to simply add and manage article posts, so I was a bit caught off-guard; however, knowing George’s dedication, I wasn’t too surprised.”
From that point on, George and Gor went back and forth several times, with Gor giving feedback for George to implement into the subsequent prototypes of the app. Eventually, the app was ready to be presented to the other EICs and The Edition’s faculty-sponsor Dr. Adam Wilsman.
The final prototype of the app has the features of the currently active website. Readers can access all previous posts sorted by the five desks–News, Features, Opinions, Arts & Tech, and Sports– and columns. Print cycles will also be displayed in a more organized fashion.
It also introduces many features tailored to students accustomed to scrolling through news on mobile applications.
“One major addition is how the website doesn’t allow viewers to see a staff directory–you can do that in the app, with all of their different posts,” George said. “You can also look through the different print cycles in a more organized way.”
“And then, you can also look through The Edition’s social media pages directly through the app. The search may be a little bit better than what the website has as well.”
In addition to these features, the forte of any app is a notification system that keeps readers updated in real time. These include new articles, new prints and more, allowing students to engage more easily with fresh content.
Notifications also bring new visibility to web articles–pieces that don’t appear on the print editions but are regularly updated on The Edition’s website. Because these can be published at any time, they can go unnoticed or buried by new articles. The app’s notifications solve this problem, spotlighting each article.
“I really like the notification feature because we can fully customize the messages, giving them a more personal touch,” Web Editor Tyler Tang ‘26 said. “Instead of getting a standard update from ‘The Edition Application,’ it feels more like a friend telling you about an interesting story they just heard.”
The app’s features not only help The Edition better engage students but also help to bridge a gap between a student platform and a student readership.
Launching The Edition app is a turning point for the publication’s modernization. The app compiles all information in a compact and systematic layout while keeping the broader student body informed on major publication dates.
Beyond accessibility, the integration of social media introduces a new level of engagement between the newspaper and its readers, transforming the traditional one-way information into a two-way discussion.
This project demonstrates how student journalism at GA has adapted to the digital age while maintaining integrity to its core form, a newspaper. By embracing technology, the publication can integrate into daily student life, not just as a news app but as a unique platform for community engagement.