By Caroline Hong
Exit 33, South’s literary magazine, recently hit the web with poems, photography, art, and more.   The Exit 33 staff members, who are “very computer literate and technologically savvy,” according to  advisor Mr. Ehrlich, put a lot of hard work into the making of the website.   “My staff this year is just amazing, knowledgeable, willing, and able to move us into the twenty-first century,” he said.
The idea for a website arose at the beginning of last year and was created after some discussion.  “Last year, we started a survey on Exit 33 just for the members, and in January, responses suggested that we needed to accept more [submissions] because we have only fifty or sixty submissions that make it into the magazine, while there are over eight hundred works submitted to Exit 33,” said Christine Wong, the Editor-in-Chief of Exit 33.  “We want to include a lot more than fifty or sixty and, instead of black and white pictures, show the pictures in color on the website.  It is where we can save all the years of work – where people can look back and see what people from years ago have written.  You can also share links with your friends outside of the school so you don’t have to share the whole magazine.  We have only three hundred copies of the magazine, but the website is endless.”
The new website is very clean; it includes writing coupled with art and photography by students.  “I really like how plain the text is, color-wise,” said freshman Giovanni Xu, a new visitor to the site.  “With the pictures, it is very enticing for the person who looks at the website, and so it really draws me to click through the different links to see the other literature that is posted.”
Besides the magazine’s  new Internet achievement, Exit 33 recently received Second Place in the American Scholastic Press Awards. It was also ranked Superior and nominated for the Highest Award in the NCTE PRESLM (National Council of Teachers of English’s Program to Recognize Excellence in Student Literary Magazines) contest.  “It is just a really great thing for the club because it shows how all our hard work actually pays off,” said sophomore Rachel An, a website editor of Exit 33.  “Just receiving that award is a wonderful honor because there are many other schools that apply for it.  It just means national recognition.”
Students can visit Exit 33’s website for monthly updates with more posts from various writers, artists, and photographers at exit33.greatneck.k12.ny.us.