4-26-09: The never-ending deadline
By: Andrew Bruner
Issue date: 4/24/09 Section: Editor's blog
By far the biggest change to the workings of The DePauw this semester has been the staff's newfound focus on online content. We've got video and audio clips, photo slideshows and stories and columns that you won't find in the newspaper. At the start of the semester, we weren't even posting photos with our stories; it was pretty much all text.
Whatever back-patting the staff can indulge in though, there's so much more we can do in the future. Two recent events on campus - Little 5 and the board of trustees meetings - have provided test cases for thedepauw.com's potential, as well as the challenges that will come from a never-ending deadline.
As the Little 5 street sprints were taking place a couple Fridays ago, professor Kent Menzel was recording the official results. The DePauw's sports editor, Tyler James, was on-hand with his laptop, getting the results from Menzel as soon as they were complete. With a few mouse clicks, Tyler posted the results on our Web site, and Menzel was telling the crowds at the street sprints that they could find the results at thedepauw.com.
That's an editor in chief's dream come true, folks.
Even cooler, because of the inclusion of multimedia, was the breaking news on DePauw's budget that appeared on thedepauw.com around 6 p.m. this Friday. The board of trustees' spring meetings had ended Friday afternoon, and President Casey and board Chairman R. David Hoover held a conference with the student media at 3:30 that day to discuss the highlights - a gracious opportunity the board has provided to the student media every year that I've been here.
In past years The DePauw has treated this conference as fodder for a story in the following Tuesday's issue, but I wanted to see if we could use the Web site to bring the event closer to our audience. I took my laptop and recorded the entire conference beginning at 3:30, headed back to the newsroom when it ended at 4, and within two hours had edited and posted the recording online.
Whatever back-patting the staff can indulge in though, there's so much more we can do in the future. Two recent events on campus - Little 5 and the board of trustees meetings - have provided test cases for thedepauw.com's potential, as well as the challenges that will come from a never-ending deadline.
As the Little 5 street sprints were taking place a couple Fridays ago, professor Kent Menzel was recording the official results. The DePauw's sports editor, Tyler James, was on-hand with his laptop, getting the results from Menzel as soon as they were complete. With a few mouse clicks, Tyler posted the results on our Web site, and Menzel was telling the crowds at the street sprints that they could find the results at thedepauw.com.
That's an editor in chief's dream come true, folks.
Even cooler, because of the inclusion of multimedia, was the breaking news on DePauw's budget that appeared on thedepauw.com around 6 p.m. this Friday. The board of trustees' spring meetings had ended Friday afternoon, and President Casey and board Chairman R. David Hoover held a conference with the student media at 3:30 that day to discuss the highlights - a gracious opportunity the board has provided to the student media every year that I've been here.
In past years The DePauw has treated this conference as fodder for a story in the following Tuesday's issue, but I wanted to see if we could use the Web site to bring the event closer to our audience. I took my laptop and recorded the entire conference beginning at 3:30, headed back to the newsroom when it ended at 4, and within two hours had edited and posted the recording online.
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