WEB & SOCIAL MEDIA
I work closely with The Stinger's social media and website editors to keep quality standards high and make sure that we’re expanding our reach the best we can. I've also had web and social media experience outside of scholastic media, with work I’ve done for national publications as well as for the National History Day competition.
Web Development
I recently directed our website editor to adapt our site to a wide-screen format, filling up more available space that previously went to waste — this is part of our active reconstruction of the website that we are currently in the process of doing.
By being diligent in uploading all our content from print onto our website — plus online exclusive articles — we’ve made our journalism more accessible to everyone in our community. Our analytics show that over the course of this past year especially, our website viewership has been steadily increasing to more than ever before as more people check out stingerehs.com. The especially large spike in February 2024 marks the day we put the story about Biden visiting online.
We’ve also updated our story pages to make our designs more diverse and visually engaging, using different templates so that every story doesn’t look the same.
Website Accessibility
In April 2024, the Department of Justice released new guidelines on "the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile App," designed to make online content more accessible for those with disabilities, especially those with visual impairments.
In order to increase our site's accessibility, we've started improving our website by adding alternate text to images, fixing contrast errors, and more.
I've completed analysis of our site, and we're currently working on fixing the contrast issues, having addressed the major errors.
These "features" explain the various elements on the site's homepage that are accessible and are considered adequate. We're always working on expanding accessibility our whole community — whether they're readers, viewers, or listeners.
Instagram Expansion
By expanding our outreach, we've increased our social media following by over 15% each year since I became EIC. In a world where social media is used more and more for conveying information, I knew we had to do more.
I expanded our social media team from one person to five, charged with finding engaging stories to share via social media in addition to promoting our regular print and online content. In the process, they've started "senior spotlights," "teacher features," and much more.
This has led to more engagement on posts, and ultimately more opportunities to highlight students who wouldn't otherwise appear in the paper.
As much as I love print, it's limited space-wise by its very nature, and social media allows us to fill the gaps in our coverage we may miss with print.
This is one example of the "Senior Spotlights" we do every week. These short, quick get-to-know-you stories help to balance out more of our longform content.
I also changed the format of our social media posts. I created uniform templates that our social media team could adapt as they saw fit, but looked clean and professional overall. I took inspiration from award-winning publications like The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily Pennsylvanian when making these templates:
Compare last year's Instagram feed to this year's:
The Stinger's Instagram feed in February 2024
The Stinger's Instagram feed in February 2025
Some of my most extensive web and social media work has been with The Juggernaut, the only major South Asian-American news and culture website. With over 60,000+ paying subscribers, The Juggernaut publishes a new story every weekday, and has published over 1,000+ since its beginning. The startup publication has been featured by Axios, Forbes, CNBC, Harvard Business School, and Yale University. I helped cover politics, culture, business, and technology in South Asia and the diaspora.
As part of The Juggernaut’s social media presence, we advertise our email newsletter, which gets delivered to over 130,000 subscribers every Sunday. I completed a paid internship with The Juggernaut this fall, co-writing, editing, and laying out the newsletter every week with one other intern (a senior at Yale University).
Using MailChimp, an online email newsletter program, I learned HTML coding on the job as I laid out the newsletter by myself some weeks. I became responsible for finding engaging images, shortening the newsletter so that it would fit the maximum allotted space, and handling technical issues, among many other tasks.
My primary work included reporting on South Asia and the diaspora, its politics/economy, culture, business, tech, as well as book and movie reviews. I specialized in Pakistani, Afghani, and Bangladeshi political news but wrote for all sections.
Here’s a sample single weekly email newsletter that I co-wrote a couple months ago (Click on the image to read through each section, slide by slide):
While I ultimately ended up doing newsletter work for The Juggernaut, I was required to do some social media as well for my application/trial period before officially beginning my internship. Making these Instagram posts showed me the power of social media to tell stories, especially on those that my readers may have limited context for. See my samples below.
“Ya Husayn! Ya Husayn!”
These cries filled the streets of Pakistan on July 17 — or the tenth of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar. Commemorated annually by millions of Shia Muslims, including about 25 million in Pakistan alone, Ashura marks the martyrdom of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE. About 15% of Pakistani Muslims identify as Shia, according to Pew Research — in contrast to the Sunni majority.
Shia Muslims spend the day mourning Husayn’s death in a number of ways: reciting elegies recounting the tragedy at Karbala, and practicing matam. Matam, or self-flagellation out of grief, symbolizes mourners sharing in the suffering of Husayn as he was killed at Karbala.
However, many times Shias are not allowed to spend their somber day of mourning and commemoration peacefully. In Pakistan and other parts of the Islamic world, mourners are the targets of terrorist attacks by extremists who see the honoring of Husayn as sacrilegious. In order to maintain order, the Pakistani government temporarily shut down internet and cell service access in several provinces while Ashura processions took place this year.
Photo courtesy of The Economic Times.
Celebrated primarily in the UK and Canada, South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM), runs from July 18 — August 17 every year, honoring the various traditions of South Asia — defined by the South Asian Heritage Trust as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Founded by Jasvir Singh, Binita Kane, and Anita Rani, SAHM aims to explore South Asian impact on Britain, exploring how South Asian culture and individuals have helped to mold the UK into the nation it is today. Additionally, SAHM seeks to explore all aspects of South Asian history.
“How can we make sure we’re not just focusing on Partition?” Singh said when discussing SAHM with The Independent last year. Instead of being solely centered around Partition, SAHM explores a variety of themes relating to an ever-evolving South Asian identity. This year’s SAHM theme is “Free to be Me,” observing the “beauty of simply being yourself.”
Several significant days essential to South Asian history will pass during this month, including:
● Maldives Independence Day, July 26
● Bhutan Independence Day, August 8
● Pakistan Independence Day, August 14
● India Independence Day, August 15
● Partition Commemoration Day, August 17
Learn more at 🔗 https://southasianheritage.org.uk/about-the-south-asian-heritage-month/
Logo courtesy of the South Asian Heritage Trust.
What part of your South Asian heritage are you proud of?
National History Day Project
My journalistic spirit doesn't end at writing for publications.
Last year, I worked with a group of friends to create a project showcasing the horrors of the Partition of India for the National History Day (NHD) Competition. We chose to present our project in the form of a website.
You can skim through the site here.
Using the NHD-specific website builder, one of my friends and I crafted an original website, incorporating image carousels, graphic designs, and more to showcase our research.
This is one example of the several web pages I created for our project, incorporating graphics, quotes, and more to meet the competition requirements. The NHD-specific site creator was much less flexible than Wix or WordPress (or SNO Sites), but we still obtained a perfect score in website design.
During the project, I also played my part as a journalist. Adding a unique touch to our project that many competing groups lacked, I was able to interview Partition survivors and their descendants, gathering quotes and first-hand testimonies that we incorporated into our project.
I also translated the autobiography of my great-grandfather, Nasir Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ismael Khan, from Urdu to English, as he writes extensively about Partition. Additionally, I translated various Urdu newspaper articles from 1945-1947 for my group, allowing us to gain keen insights through primary journalistic sources. We went on to win 3rd Place at states and qualify as alternates for the national competition.
Translating his dense Urdu writings was not easy. Even though I am a native Urdu speaker, my great-grandfather used many terms I was unfamiliar with and could not find online definitions for — I had to use a physical Urdu to English dictionary from 1950 to translate some of it.