Goodbye Print - Regent College Creates an Interactive Online Newspaper
The Regent World, a free publication of Regent College that focuses on College news, research, people, and events, has officially moved to the web!
The College’s Marketing and Communications team has been working on the switch to the web since May of 2012—a project that included a complete re-design of the content and look and feel of the publication. The visual design is the work of Tracey Falk at Domain7, the web agency responsible for Regent College’s website. Jonathan Fajardo and Lan Yan implemented the design, while Ken McAllister coded the site.
“We’re very excited about the ability the web gives us to share the rich, forward-thinking, and provocative content that our faculty, students, and alumni continually put out there,” says Veronika Klaptocz, Managing Editor of The Regent World.
The content has been built around a number of categories such as Leading Ideas, Profile, Arts & Theology, and Field Notes, to give each issue structure and consistency. Furthermore, our new publication mandate is to focus each issue on a particular theme. The theme of the inaugural online issue is "Faith and Politics in a Fractured World," featuring a lead article on the conference of the same name that took place at Regent in October of 2012, along with profiles of Rex Murphy, Margaret Somerville, and Preston Manning.
The primary factor behind the decision to move the publication online was financial—it was costing Regent College approximately $60,000 per year to produce, print, and distribute three issues of 18,000 copies each.
"Times have changed. With tighter budgets and the need to find greater cost efficiencies, we were forced to take a creative look at The Regent World,” explains Sarah Clayton, Director of Marketing and Communications. “With the onset of a new website and our audiences looking for more and more content that they can view and share, it was the right place and time to take The Regent World on a new trajectory."
Although we’re thrilled to share with you our content through the web, we fully realize that this move has both its advantages and disadvantages, and that some of our readers will miss the print version. Regent College President Rod Wilson weighs the pros and cons of this change in his reflective article “The Regent World Online?”
Tell us what you think about the move to online publishing by commenting on Rod Wilson’s article, voting in the online poll, emailing as at [email protected], or calling us at 604.221.3385.
Read the online version here.