With final proofs in hand, I marched over to West Camp Press, which conveniently happens to be right next door to Otterbein’s Art and Communication Building. I proudly delivered our final revisions of T&C Magazine. This means that our first issue has officially gone to press.
As many of you are aware, Otterbein’s student news organization is in its first semester of transitioning to a new media platform. The Tan & Cardinal newspaper is now converted into a magazine that is published twice per semester, and Otterbein360.com continues to operate as a daily campus news source.
While newspapers are beautiful in their own way, it’s no secret that they are losing relevance in our culture. When it came time to decide how we should restructure our organization to reflect the changing reality of our future professions, I think that those of us on staff were all struck with some bittersweet emotions.
I, like many of our other editors, have a love-hate relationship with newspaper production. I love the pace of a newspaper. I love the intensity. I love the adrenaline rush of deadlines and the time crunch. I love how we all came together on Tuesday nights with one goal in mind and didn’t leave until we accomplished it — even if it meant that we didn’t leave the office until three o’clock in the morning.
This leads me to what I hate about newspapers: the late nights and early mornings, the deadlines, the time crunch, etc. But no matter how late the night or how tight the time crunch, I loved walking around campus the next morning to find students and professors nose-deep in the issue that we had slaved over the night before. In hindsight, those stressful, pull-your-hair-out moments seemed all the more worthwhile when the paper came out in print the next day.
