The school newspaper formerly known as The Crimson Times and now known as The Crimson J has gone online, as you might have noticed. This change brings the paper into the digital age and allows easy access for everyone.
One of the most pressing concerns for the paper has been costs. With the shift to the internet, the price of producing our paper is much cheaper. We also have more room; the print edition was limited to 12 pages, and now we have as much space as we could ever need.
We now also have multimedia capability. The pictures are much clearer, and videos can be uploaded. The Student of the Month, which had been a blurb in the paper version, can now be a full-on video interview.
The class advisor, Michele Rush, said “Our Journalism class has waited a long time to have this opportunity and we’re really excited to be a part of 21st century technology. I believe the skills the students will learn now that we are online will serve them well in the future.”
As a student of journalism myself, I have mixed feelings. It’s exciting to have all the new toys available on the website, but a little sad to be leaving the print version. We won’t have a physical copy to read, but things like archiving will become much easier with the website.
All of these new features work toward one goal: making the paper more accessible. Instead of publishing once a month in print, we can update weekly if not daily. This means the articles are much more up to date. As a news organization, that’s exceedingly important. When we would have written a review of a school event or something like the release of a movie, we can now post an announcement beforehand, information about the event, and a review after it has happened.
That’s what news is about: Punctuality and relevance. If you’d like to keep up with our news, follow us on Twitter at CrimsonJ117. There’s also soon to be a Facebook page.