Last week marked the end of nearly a year of work, discussions and internal planning for the Campus Times. After 10 years of working with web publisher College Publisher, we made the decision to build our own unique and innovative website from the ground up, bringing the online edition of the CT to the same high standards we hold for the print edition.
Just as going independent from the Students’ Association several years ago freed us from a conflict of interest in reporting, we now have complete artistic and creative freedom over our online methods of distribution that we did not have with College Publisher. This not only gave us the ability to create and redesign our website, but also to customize the interface for editors to easily upload content and multimedia.
With this new site comes a new and increased effort for the online realm. Articles will no longer be posted only on Thursdays, nor will they simply be a mirror of stories from that week’s print edition. We are branching out to bring unique online content in real time, rather than once a week as in the past.
It is 2010 after all; we figured we might as well catch up with the times.
Over the next semester, more features, including another newly added emphasis on multimedia, will continually be added to the site. While most of the work is behind us, the new website is a starting point for many new and restructured initiatives that were not possible until this time.
Rest assured, this in no way means a decrease of staffing or time given to the print edition. It was time for the CT to stop ignoring the Internet as a means of communication, and we hope this first step will be one of many in terms of further expanding content and our coverage of campus life to everybody in the UR community.
