Innovative Ideas for School Newspapers Using Interactive PDFs

School newspapers are the pulse of academic institutions, giving student bodies, faculties, and other educational professionals a space to share essential information with their community. They also offer an outlet for self-expression, artistic exploration, dialogue, and more.

But physical newspapers are rapidly falling out of favor in America, and only about 4% of the public prefers getting their updates from print sources. Interactive PDFs are quickly replacing print and other mediums, as they’re more accessible, cost-effective, and engaging than traditional media formats.

Print is nostalgic, but it simply can’t compete with the versatility and convenience of interactive PDFs. Let’s explore exciting school newspaper ideas and strategies that leverage interactive PDFs to be more eye-catching, compelling, and worthwhile to read.

Why choose interactive PDFs for school newspapers?

If you’re producing a catalog, newsletter, magazine, or paper in traditional print or using static PDFs, transitioning to interactive school newspaper PDFs will benefit you considerably.

Switching to this captivating modern format helps you achieve the following:

• Increased engagement: Videos, audio, clickable links, and similar interactive content drum up more interest than static text could ever dream of. Interactive pages generate over 52% more user engagement than plain websites, and users spend 56% more time viewing interactive versus static content.
• Quick, easy, environmentally friendly distribution: Newspapers require trees to print on, gas to transport, and labor hours to deliver from place to place. Meanwhile, interactive PDFs are posted online for everyone to access, do almost no damage to our environment, and cost less to produce than traditional print media.
• Enhanced digital literacy: Understanding how to use computers, the internet, and other emerging digital solutions is essential for young people to understand the world and remain competitive in the job market. Unfortunately, only about 2% of students ever reach the highest level of digital literacy. But interactive PDFs encourage us to learn more about novel file formats and adapt to new technologies as they arise.
• Experiment with designs, content, and more: Traditional PDFs stay fairly rigid in formatting and style, while printing presses permit even less artistic freedom. Conversely, interactive PDFs let you tweak layouts, embed media such as pictures and videos, and develop aesthetically pleasing designs to up your newspaper’s overall appearance.

The benefits of interactive PDFs are clear, but if you’re wondering how to create a school newspaper with them, well, there’s more than one compelling way.

Creative content ideas for school newspapers using interactive PDFs

Interactive PDFs offer various useful, engaging features that aren’t possible with print or traditional PDFs, including the following strategies and ideas.

Interactive polls and surveys

Easily collect students’ opinions on the key issues affecting your school and community via interactive PDFs. Interactive polls and surveys let readers provide quick, useful answers with a few clicks using multiple-choice or drop-down lists. Then, you can easily access the results of such surveys without having to collect ballots or tally votes by hand.

Embedded videos

According to PEW Research Center’s News Platform Fact Sheet, Americans prefer to consume their news on television or digital devices rather than reading directly—and the younger the viewer, the more likely they are to lean on video sites for their information. Interactive PDFs let you leverage this modern reliance on video news by embedding clips directly into your paper.

You may consider including:

• Teacher, student, and staff introductions
• Event highlights, sports updates, and similar announcements
• Other relevant news about your school and community

Nearly half of Gen Zers watch online videos daily. Include a few clips in your newspaper to make more of that time constructive and informative.

Photo galleries with interactive features

Interactive PDFs mean no more flipping from page to page or scrolling endlessly to view an image collection. Instead, students can simply click or swipe from photo to photo within a slideshow gallery to view the latest sports action shots, art projects, or other pictures around your school.

Audio features: Podcasts or interviews

Over half of podcast listeners tune in to learn, while nearly a third do so to stay updated on world events. Podcasts and interviews are the perfect medium for sharing quick news bites from around your campus—but they don’t have to be uploaded to streaming services.

You can embed a podcast, interview, or any other audio file directly into your school newspaper with interactive PDFs. Have students speak on current events or get teachers to go in-depth on interesting subjects—it’ll add a dynamic aspect to your news that the audio fanatics in your audience will absolutely adore.

Design tips for creating interactive PDFs

Interactive PDFs can elevate your student newspaper design, make your publication more accessible, and engage your readership—but only if you know how to use them.

Choosing the right tools

Plenty of tools are currently available for creating interactive PDFs, but many of them are not as convenient or user-friendly as others. To create cleanly-formatted, interactive PDFs with minimal effort, choose a solution such as:

• FLIPpages
• Adobe Acrobat
• Canva
• FlipHTML5

Before uploading content to these or any similar platform, convert it into standard PDF format. Likewise, check that all multimedia elements are within file limits and optimized for easy conversion.

Best practices for layout and design

To get started with interactive PDFs, it’s pertinent to choose a platform with ample preset templates from which you can work. The rich, dynamic features of interactive PDFs are what distinguish them from other formats, so you’ll want to include plenty of:

• Clickable links
• Interactive elements
• Embedded multimedia

Balance your textual elements with these compelling features to avoid overwhelming readers with a wall of words. Likewise, your paper should be intuitive to navigate, cleanly formatted, and appealing to the eye.

How to distribute your interactive school newspaper

Your school’s website is the perfect medium for uploading, hosting, and sharing your interactive PDF newsletters. You can then link the page on your institution’s social media accounts to drive more traffic and increase your readership.

If you’re still running a print or traditional PDF newspaper, phase it out and use the last few editions to inform readers of your new medium. Interactive PDFs are the future of school newspapers, and you should make the switch as soon as possible.

A new era of school journalism

Interactive PDFs are giving birth to a new generation of school newspaper ideas. They allow for the quick, cost-effective distribution of school updates in a far more engaging format than print or traditional PDFs.

Plus, with embeddable videos, photo galleries, links, polls, and more, they’re completely changing the capabilities of the school paper to align with 21st-century education.

If you’re running a school paper, switch to interactive PDFs to make your publication more compelling, innovative, and accessible. However, don’t just go with any platform to get a job done. Flip over the costly, confusing solutions to find the best: FLIPpages.

FLIPpages makes creating interactive PDFs—such as this newsletter we digitize for Kirkwood High School—a breeze. With a variety of eye-catching, customizable templates available, getting started literally takes seconds. Simply select a style and upload an existing PDF—you’ll immediately be upgraded with the option to embed videos, add surveys, and more.

Explore FLIPpages, your school’s professional solutions for crafting incredible, interactive newspapers.