Zach Voss of the KSU Sentinel (which uses Joomla, by the way) poses a pertinent question in response to an earlier post: #

What do you do if they don’t want to put stuff on the web, due to low content for a weekly newspaper. #

A couple of thoughts come to mind immediately: #

1. The web site readership is not the paper readership. This has been borne out by surveys (PDF download). Most people who read college media web sites are alumni, parents, prospective students, faculty, staff and administration – not students. So if you’re posting materials to the web site before they appear in print, chances are you’re not going to hit a lot of overlap.
2. What’s to keep you from beefing up the web content while you have a chance? Let’s say there’s a print story coming out about a controversial event on campus. Why can’t the web site have a video, or audio, or even a hyperlinked story about the event before the paper comes out? Is the print product somehow privileged because it comes out once a week? That’s crazy. Report what happens as it happens, and let the print staff provide the depth that they can as they can.
3. Let the web staff breathe. This is more a philosophical point, but I’ll say it here – web editors are just like any students. They need time to develop and time to do what they do best. Why put their efforts at the end of a 19th century production cycle? Give them the stories when they are ready. So what if the weekly print edition has a dearth of material. That’s the print edition’s fault, not the fault of the web editor(s).
4. Repeat this mantra with me: You can’t “scoop” yourself. Whether you break a story online or in print is irrelevant. The fact is that you broke the story. Revel in that. Enjoy it. Ask how you can make it better through the online storytelling.

Above all, don’t privilege print just because it’s print. That’s the wrong attitude to have. Keep pushing the point, Zach. At some point, people will see that the web site doesn’t compete with the print product, but complements it. #

#