Since 1881, we at The Phoenix have worked tirelessly to write pieces relevant to the Swarthmore community that are informative and conducive to discourse. As we continue to publish, we aim to stay ahead of the curve. It takes visionaries to know what the next move is, to stay ahead, and take risky decisions in order to best serve our community. With much thought from the current editorial board, advising from various outside consulting agencies, and 195DC consulting, we have decided that the best course of action, especially with the current journalistic climate, is to focus on our print publication. We will cease publishing online, as online news will soon be dead.
With the prevalence of fake news, readers have demonstrated that they don’t appreciate a 24 hour online news cycle because it requires more work on their part to verify the validity of the news that they read. Similarly, online news available at all times of day only adds additional stress to the Swarthmore community since continuous news serves as more readings that the community will never actually finish.
For our dedicated readership base, we will admit, the deletion of our website will come as a large shock, but we assure you that you are merely confusing the plate for the food, and our content will retain the same quality it always has. Online news simply cannot keep up with the fast pace of print journalism. While we rush to the presses each week, online news outlets with no real deadlines are unable to put out journalism as fast as we can in print.
As print journalism continues to grow, we must put more of our resources into printing more newspapers. As the newspapers often disappear from Parrish within just a hours of their distribution, we must focus on constant replenishment of these papers. We have a responsibility to make sure that students have access to news, as well as kindling for fires at Crumhenge. After all, The Phoenix is a source of news as well as opinions, arts, sports, and flames. Online news has reached its death, while print journalism has found itself rising from the ashes.
One of the benefits to students is that with the print copy of The Phoenix, students can better let professors know that they aren’t paying attention in their professor’s class — reading on a laptop provides far too much uncertainty about what students might be doing. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to being distracted in a lecture, and print journalism prides itself in exposing the truth.
Perhaps most importantly, print is also the only way students can access The Phoenix’s crossword puzzle. We at The Phoenix recognize that the online version of The Phoenix is worthless without the joy of solving word-based puzzle games.
As we shift our focus to print, we look forward to moving our printing operations to campus as well. Currently, we work with a company called Bartash, but they unreasonably failed to deliver the paper during the small and harmless snow storms this semester. Because of this deficiency, we believe it is best for us to do our printing in house in order to ensure that these delays no longer rob the Swarthmore community of timely print publication. After extensive talks with the administration, in exchange for agreeing to write only positive stories about them, they have agreed to give The Phoenix ownership of both frat houses to hold our printers.
We are excited to deliver news solely in print to the student body moving forward. We thank you, our readers, for sticking with us through this shift.
The Death of Online News
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