Editor:

I was surprised to see that The Daily Utah Chronicle will shift from a print to an entirely online Friday edition. I was not surprised by the change, but rather by this change being so little so late.

Why has this student paper not gone to an entirely online publication format anyway, or, at the very least, moved to a daily online edition with a weekly or bi-weekly printed edition? Paper, ink, and distribution are costly and environmentally unfriendly. Newspapers are more valuable in print form when significant portions of its readership do not have Internet access. At the university, though, most students have Internet access from their personal computers and everyone has access through university computer labs.

In these tough economic times, it makes more sense to cut out the cost of paper and ink than it does to cut other more important things on campus. Plus, convergence journalism8212;writing for online formats8212;is quickly becoming the standard. Perhaps a move to an all-online student newspaper might finally shove the university’s journalism curriculum forward so our graduates can compete in the job market with graduates of other universities that thoroughly train students to write for the Web.

Daren C. Brabham,
Doctoral student and graduate teaching fellow
Department of Communication