By LILLI MARTIN, Editor
The way readers will be receiving news from Eastern Oklahoma State College’s Statesman is changing. Instead of being printed once a month and put around campus, the paper will be published on the first Friday of each month to the Statesman’s website – statesman.eosc.edu. There also will be links posted for stories on the Statesman’s social media websites and those will be shareable like McAlester News Capital.
“We have decided to go completely online this year,” said Statesman adviser Kristen Turner. “It really is the smart decision as hard print newspapers are becoming less and less relevant for a younger audience. The Statesman, and all of our Mass Communication ventures, are here to prepare our students for careers. More and more media careers are digital, so this is the natural move.”
The paper will be using multimedia platforms, such as video segments each issue. It will all be more interactive as well, with surveys on the website. Most people are getting their news digitally through social media and the student newspaper is trying to adapt to those ways as well. There will be a heavier presence online from the Statesman from now on.
“We will also have a Social Media Manager for the first time this year,” Turner continued. “Whether we like it or not, social media is the driving force for information today. Teaching my students how to manage messages effectively and responsibly is critically important in today’s world.”
The Statesman’s first-ever Social Media Manager is Journey Dees-West, a Mass Communication sophomore, and she will be running the paper’s online presence on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.
“I’m excited about the position because I’ve always been interested in things like this,” Dees-West said. “All kinds of ideas keep coming, and I can’t wait to bring them to life.”
Although it seems like a bittersweet goodbye to the Statesman’s printing days, the paper is just slowly following other news sources. Many colleges and universities have moved their student newspapers either completely online or mainly online. OU Daily has moved nearly completely online by only printing on Mondays and uploading stories online every day. The journey to going completely digital is one most news source is taking to make things more accessible and cheaper, as well as using multimedia more within our news.
Follow The Statesman on our social media pages.
Facebook: The Eastern Statesman Paper
Twitter: Eastern_Statesman
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Youtube: Eastern Statesman
