This is the final semester that The Collegian, Ashland University’s award-winning student newspaper, will publish a printed version of the paper. The final print edition of The Collegian will appear on campus on Dec. 3.

The Collegian staff will instead focus its energies on ashlandcollegian.com, it’s award-winning website. Additionally, students in the Department of Journalism and Digital Media are also planning a new magazine, to be launched in late 2016.

“Newspapers across the country are contending with the Internet and how long to continue printing a paper product,” said Collegian faculty adviser Matt Tullis. “We’ve made the decision to focus on the Web because it allows our reporters to spend far more time reporting and writing stories that focus on AU as well as the surrounding community.”

The Collegian launched its website five years ago. Since then, readership on the Web has grown significantly. Nearly as many people read Collegian stories online than in print, and the majority of those people are doing so on mobile devices, Tullis said.

“As an adviser, I’m looking at how do we best train our students to be top-notch journalists,” he said. “Once we eliminate the significant time commitment to designing and laying out newspaper pages, we will be able to use that time to report, edit and revise the stories our reporters are working on.”

Tullis said the goal is to have at least one new story on ashlandcollegian.com  every day, including having a longer feature or enterprise piece run on the weekend.

This will also allow The Collegian to cover AU athletics on deadline, with game stories and photos appearing online shortly after the games are over. 

As for the magazine, students in JDM 320 Feature Writing are planning its content while students in JDM 331 Digital Media Management are developing a business plan and a launch plan.

Tullis said he expects the magazine will have a mixture of service stories, Collegian Spotlight features, and longform narrative journalism. Currently there are plans to do one magazine a semester, but ultimately Tullis hopes the magazine will be produced quarterly.