In the coming weeks, The Polytechnic will be testing a new way of publishing. Instead of waiting for Wednesday to roll around, we will aim to publish content to our website as it comes in. We live in a world where social media is a dominant news source—everything happens faster today than it did 10 years ago. Waiting until Wednesdays for coverage of events happening today simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
For some of the more “breaking news” type of events from recent years, this is something we’ve done with some success. Yes, it required new deadlines to be met and some unusual working hours, but it was important that those stories reached the Rensselaer community as quickly as possible.
Don’t get us wrong; the Wednesday paper isn’t going away anytime soon. We know many prefer to sit down with the paper at lunch and peruse—reading articles that might otherwise have been left unread. As long as we have the funds and the capability to provide the community with a physical copy, we will.
This change does not come without challenge. The Poly is not our full time job—although it feels that way for some of us. Covering an event, writing the article, and getting it through three rounds of copy reading all take time. With rolling deadlines, there is less pressure to finish up an article over taking extra time to prepare for an exam. It will certainly be difficult for us to adapt to this change, but we believe it will come as a benefit to the community.