Working for a student newspaper in this age can be a dizzying task. Beyond just putting out a newspaper each week around our class schedules, we now find ourselves tasked with the obligation of providing content across multiple platforms. Among our small staff, we must find the manpower to keep our Twitter page updated, make announcements and interact with readers on our Facebook page. And new this semester, keep our readers apprised to the behind-the-scenes work of The Oswegonian on its new official Tumblr.

We do not currently have anyone on our staff dedicated to keeping these pages updated, so we split the duty among our staff. So far, we have found the work to be worth it. While we love seeing our work in print, and focus the majority of our attention on the physical paper, it would be foolish of us to believe that we could be a viable media outlet while only producing a weekly print edition.

This is obviously not a new development, but it is one we are pushing for especially this semester. We have attempted to live-tweet more Laker sporting events and plan to continue this trend, and even expand into other school events, such as last fall’s Media Summit. Our use of Twitter is still evolving, but our focus will be on updating it as often as possible.

We are most excited about our new Tumblr blog. Tumblr provides us with the widest range of options. We will post pictures and videos from the office, share .pdf files of the front page before it goes to print and write posts explaining the process behind getting some of our bigger stories. Our goal is to make our writers and editors as visible to the public as possible. Tumblr allows us the opportunity to not only provide updates on what content to expect in the week’s paper, but also provide updates on the conversations and shenanigans that occur in the newsroom. The hope of the Tumblr blog is to attach a face and personality to the names you read in the byline each Friday, an opportunity that is unique to the 21st century journalist.

In any event, our main goal is to reach out to readers in any way possible. So if you have not already, give us a follow on Twitter and Tumblr and get to know more about the people behind the articles.