The staff of The Collegian is proud to announce Ashland University’s new converged, multimedia website, AU Live.

Since its founding, the Journalism and Digital Media department at AU has advocated for convergence within student media where the individual outlets work in conjunction with one another to give students a well rounded learning experience. AU Live plans to take this a step further.

Essentially, AU Live will be a one stop shop for all Ashland University student media.

Whereas in the past there were separate websites and mediums to find The Collegian, WRDL and AUTV-20, this new website will present content from each medium in a manner that makes and promotes easy browsing to inform readers about the happenings across the AU campus and community.

Even the assembling of the website was a united effort among JDM students who were in last spring’s Multimedia Reporting class.

They were assigned to build a converged media website, and decided they wanted to make something that would have a lifespan beyond the class project.

That effort, combined with my position as media content editor, resulted in the ultimate idea, design, and features for the site.

While the website’s content itself is a contribution of the student body, the end result would not be what it currently is without the help received from JDM faculty like Dr. Dave McCoy, who gave us the time and space needed to work on the project.

We owe another thank you to Professor Maggie Cogar, who was a major help in guiding the project and ensuring that we were on course.

Traditional media outlets are still vital to this campus and the rest of the world, and you will still be able to find The Collegian, AUTV-20 and WRDL by their original means, but AU Live adds a new level to the consumption of media that is intended to appeal to a 21st century audience.

AU Live will also enable more multimedia storytelling where a reporter covers a story across more than one platform. For example, a student might be assigned to write a story for The Collegian while also covering it for AUTV-20 or WRDL. They might even do it for all three media.

This will take organization and enthusiasm from students that AU Live is prepared to handle.

We like to believe that AU Live is not only a memorable name, but captures the spirit of the website itself.

Between the breaking news ticker and the recent sports scores scroller, people who come to the website will immediately know what is happening around the Ashland University campus without having to click on their mouse.

This directly relates back today’s fast-paced media landscape that we, as future professionals, will be ready to enter once we graduate. Today’s consumers want quality reporting that is quick and accessible. This will result in us growing as reporters alongside the website.

We are here not only to learn to be storytellers, but to be a resource for the AU community.

We pick our stories based on what we think would be interesting for our readers so we can provide them something of value. And now it is more accessible than ever.

Do not forget to visit us at ashland-collegian.com. If you would like to hear even more from us, you can also support us on social media, where we are active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.