The Record has made a quiet but significant change to the way it works.
For many students, picking up the Record on Thursday is normal. But such an action is declining across the nation.Newspapers everywhere are struggling to maintain their profits as many readers increasingly go to the Internet to get their news for free. The Record – which is free for its students – is not suffering from this shift, but has joined in the great debate of print media. What many of you may not know is that the Record is now primarily a blog.
Yes, the Record is still printed on newsprint. No, the staff is not made up of bloggers. Yes, we still deal primarily in news rather than the opinions of one or more contributors.
Our shift comes in the way that we write our stories. The software that we now use to write our stories is called WordPress – software used by bloggers to easily post articles online in a timely fashion. Once the stories are written and ready to be prepared for print, the layout staff takes the articles from WordPress and arranges the content in Adobe InDesign.
While this may seem like a small change that mainly affects us as a staff, it may have larger implications down the road. Much like the Campus Communicator – which was at one time printed off and posted in physical locations on campus – a change may someday come to the Record when students, faculty, staff and alumni get more familiar with digital media.
Personally, I’m a bit quaint when it comes to wanting a physical paper that I can hold in my hands. But in time, if that opinion becomes the minority, the Record may change form yet again.
Regardless of if or when we make that transition, the shift to WordPress is a nice assurance that whatever the future of print media, the Record will be adapting and changing to make sure that Goshen College gets its news.
And I think we can all appreciate that.
