Letter from the Editor: The Arrowhead Goes Online

The newspaper industry is changing. Everywhere you look, the public passes on print journalism for the convenience and accessibility of the internet. The internet has allowed for up-to-the-minute breaking news that newspapers can only update once every twenty-four hours.

In light of these recent changes, we at The Arrowhead have come to the realization that, in a world of reporting events as they happen, a quarterly newspaper would not suffice. We were simply unable to keep our classmates informed.  We have to submit our articles well over a week before they are distributed to allow the principal time to approve its content and reprographics to print thousands of issues. In that time, any news article we write becomes outdated. As far as the new fast-paced form of media is concerned, an article written ten days after an event is nine days and twenty-three hours too late.

The online newspaper will allow us to create news pieces and publish them in a minute fraction of what we used to. For example, I wrote this fine letter in thirty minutes, and it will likely be proofread and posted in the next thirty minutes. That is so much easier than the two week lapse between construction and publication in the days of old. However, we will still be producing a print edition of The Arrowhead (whether or not it will play second fiddle to the online publication, only time will tell), and we hope the two form a symbiotic relationship.

We are one of the few elite newspapers in Southwest PA to launch a student newspaper, and as Editor-in-Chief, I couldn’t be prouder of that fact. I would like to thank my entire staff for their hard work and excellence and the administration for allotting us the funds to pay for this software. I would like to especially thank the years of detractors whose complaints of the “unprofessionalism” and “lack of news” in The Arrowhead have driven us obsessively toward improvement. We hope you enjoy the website for years to come.