More than 19,900 of you read The Post online yesterday. Thousands more read The Post in print, though that number is more difficult to tabulate.
My roommate was surprised that The Post printed a newspaper Thursday.
It’s part of The Post’s mission statement to print a newspaper “every day classes are in session,” so he figured we’d take the night off.
That’s hardly an option in the age of all-day online publishing. When we got wind of the closure of Ohio University’s main campus, it was more of a question of how we wanted to publish the news than if we wanted to publish it at all.
We first reported news of the closure around 3 p.m. Wednesday. That’s 90 minutes before our daily budget meeting, where we plan what goes in the newspaper and how we’re managing thepostathens.com. Our top editors spent much of that time deciding whether we would publish a newspaper or put our full efforts toward our online edition.
Here’s what was on the table. What would you decide?
We considered three options: Printing a full 10,000-copy release of the newspaper; ditching the print product altogether in favor of more robust online coverage; and printing a limited run of approximately 4,000 newspapers to our most prominent drop-off points.
- The first option seemed frivolous. Many newspapers would not be picked up, given that many campus buildings would likely be unoccupied Thursday.
- The second seemed plausible, but we were concerned that it was already too late in the day to do anything out of the ordinary with our website.
- The third offered the best of both worlds, given that we would still have a print presence at each of our off-campus distribution points and the main student hubs on campus.
We picked the third option. This saved us a couple bucks and made it so our distributor wouldn’t have to collect bundles of unread newspapers around campus this morning. Our primary concern, however, was how our decision would affect readers. Our choice allowed us to reach readers online and in print — business as usual.
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More than 19,900 of you read The Post online yesterday. Thousands more read The Post in print, though that number is more difficult to tabulate.
I tip my hat to the Post staffers who stayed up late Wednesday to bring you the news. Those readership figures show that their efforts were well worth it.
As always, thanks for reading.
Jim Ryan is a senior studying journalism and political science and editor-in-chief of The Post. Were you glad to see The Post on newsstands Thursday? Think The Post should have published online only for the day? Contact him at jr992810@ohio.edu or on Twitter at @Jimryan015.
