Rexburg Campus Concealed Carry

I use to write as a volunteer for BYU–Idaho's newspaper Scroll.  However, I've since moved on to bigger and better things.  I was hired just two days ago as the Arts and Entertainment Assistant Editor of Scroll.  I'm moving up in the world!
But when I was just a humble writer, I wrote a story about Facebook group called Rexburg Campus Concealed Carry.  Their aim is to allow students to carry concealed weapons on campuses in Rexburg.  My story made the front page of Scroll, although it was more than likely because of the subject matter rather than my actual ability as a writer.  All stories written in Scroll are posted online, for all the world to view.  If I was to take my story one step further on the Internet, there are two things I could do to help make the experience a little less "meh" and a little more "Bam!" (For those of you old enough to remember Emerald, that was for him).

1.) A Quick Stats Feed
For articles of controversy, a quick stats feed is a great way to give quick facts to readers.  Quick facts help engage readers and they are most likely to read the entire article.  Especially for my article, I think it would be cool to also have a map that showed how each state would be expected to vote in the event of a federal gun law.

2.) Poll
Everyone likes to have their voice heard right? A simple pole to the right of my article would make the article more interesting.  Most people who read Scroll attend BYU–I or live around the school.  A poll would be a way to record what the majority of the community thinks about this issue.  It can be applied to any article though.  It's not just for controversial articles.  For example, an article about teeth sensitivity could have a poll about how prevalent teeth sensitivity in the area, what kind of sensitivity is most common, or how victims deal with living without smoothies and/or hot chocolate.

In case you haven't noticed, the new age is a digital age.  Newspapers are disappearing all over the place.  In 2008, Pew Research released a study about the Internet taking over print news.  They found that 2008 was the first year people choose online over print newspapers.  In fact, one of the oldest newspapers, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, became an online-only newspaper in 2009 after 149 years.  Print newspapers is becoming a thing of the past, and it's important to utilize all resources available to make articles as visually pleasing to audiences as possible.