The Feather recently sponsored a word scramble in hopes of promoting student readership. And after a month of running the contest, Jon Howard, ’03, figured out the riddle.

With the newspaper’s Internet edition updating daily, the contest appeared unsolvable until Howard spent a little more than an hour on Dec. 5 and figured out the clues spelled EAGLE.

“I am going to spend the $25.00 on Christmas presents,” Howard said. “It wasn’t really that hard once I sat down to figure it out.”

A clue was given in various articles throughout the online newspaper. There was one capital letter per article. The scramble was a single word.

“The Feather is really good and students should read it,” Principal Gary Schultz said. “It is good information and quality journalism. It is a great way to stay informed. The main reason for the word scramble was to encourage information gathering and reading in general,” Principal Schultz said. “Also students should go onto the website to recognize the accomplishments of their fellow classmates.”

The newspaper is hopeful that daily readership will increase and The Feather will get more exposure. After the first week of the contest, readership did increase twenty percent according to The Feather’s site meter.

“This activity is to help encourage students and parents to keep in touch with student life, sports teams and student features,” adviser Greg Stobbe said. “The contest is a way to encourage students to read their high school newspaper.”

Last year under Highwired, The Feather was getting an average of 80 hits per day.

“With Highwired, The Feather was well-known and had good exposure; everyone knew the URL address,” Stobbe said. “However, when Highwired.com went down, we had to change our address.”

The Feather’s new address is www.thefeather.com.