New Year, new Web site

At the beginning of this school year, Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism introduced a sixth sequence to its curriculum: online journalism. The school already offered classes in Web-based journalism, but the addition of another sequence to list between broadcast and public relations made clear the future of news media requires an increased attention to an online presence.

Today, The Post re-launches our Web site, http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu. Completely reworked from frame-to-frame during the past six months, the new site still contains the same stories readers find in the print edition.

But the new site boasts a slew of new features and content for online readers. Each story will contain links to related stories, past coverage and outside Web sites that provide more information. These links will expand the depth of the articles during past coverage and attach to articles relevant Internet content. This will allow new readers to go into The Post's archives to find our old stories. In effect, the site will allow readers to trace any given story from start to finish with a few clicks.

Also on the new Web site, readers can post items on our daily calendar. Each day, The Post will list the events we know about on the pop-up calendar. To have events listed, send an e-mail to General Assignment Editor Rob Chalifoux, robert.chalifoux@ohio.edu, at least two days before you want the event posted. Each day, log onto The Post Online to check out To Do Today. OU offers a slew of events. This is The Post's effort to help the campus know where programming dollars are going.

The Post will add special pages for continuing coverage and our special projects. For instance, our September 11: One Year Later, Halloween and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 packages will have pages of their own. Athens City Council and OU trustees coverage will have pages of their own. During this quarter, other packages will be added, so check back often.

In addition to the complete print edition, The Post Online will have special Web-exclusive material. This added content will be teased in the print edition and posted online. Look for more photos, longer articles and special sidebars on the Web site. For instance, in today's Web edition, several sports stories are posted exclusively on the Web.

But it would not be fair to say the new Web site is perfect. After several years of decay, The Post is working with computer engineers to restore the online search engine. Readers online currently can browse the complete Web edition but cannot search. The searchable archives should be updated soon.

Our Web staff will start archiving photos starting today, and the complete print archives dating back to 1998 remain online.

The site is the product of an amazing Web redesign team, led by Athens High School senior and OU post-secondary-option enrollee Eliot Shearer. Also working on the project: OU journalism graduate student Shereen Hall and OU graphic design sophomore Ben Wisecup. Working mornings, nights and weekends, the team put The Post as a top priority and made this site rock. They are the ones who made the site look better, run quicker and read easier.

And that was the goal.

Elliott, a senior journalism major and editor of The Post,¥has a newfound appreciation for Web programmers and those fluent in HTML. Send him an e-mail at philip.elliott@ohio.edu to let him know what you think of the new site.