Once You Go Black And White, You Never Go Back ... And White

Back in Black and White

By Christopher O’Connell, ‘13

   “Print is dead,” say the bloggers, “the wave of the future is the Internet.” While newsrooms across the country race to stay relevant in the World Wide Web, a group of Gordon College students and faculty are working to get their aging paper off the Internet and back into print.

   In the fall of 2009, The Gordon College Tartan ceased to exist as a printed paper. Dr. Andrew Logemann, the English department chair who oversees the new Tartan, witnessed its demise.

   “There were a lot of good things about it, but there were [other] things that weren’t so high quality,” said Logemann. Facing pressure from competition like the literary journal Vox Populi and suffering from an overextended budget, The Tartan switched to an Internet-only publication.

   The Tartan looked to be embracing the future but many students felt it ended up hurting the paper’s credibility and readership. “[It] didn’t catch the attention of students who couldn’t pick up the paper after chapel and read it,” said Logemann.

   After three years of going unnoticed on the Internet, preliminary conversations about resurrecting The Tartan started in January 2011. One major roadblock stood in the way of The Tartan’s comeback: money. “That’s why it went online,” said Logemann. Fortunately, The Tartan received an anonymous donation from an outside source. While the new Tartan already had a sufficient budget to cover its operating costs, the donation will help it become an even higher quality publication.

   Over the summer, talks about restarting the Tartan continued, “It was fun to see it come together so quickly,” said Logemann, “it’s a really recent thing.”

   The arrival of Gordon Alum and AP reporter Jay Lindsay, class of ’92 was a bit of providence for the Tartan. “We could have searched for a year and not found someone as qualified," said Logemann. Lindsay will be mentoring student editors Katie Thompson, Becky Kearney, Gabrielle Witham and Chris O’Connell as they put together their very first paper.

   “I’m looking forward to the chance to help build the journalism program at Gordon,” said Lindsay, “The Tartan’s been around for a long time and I always liked reading it when I was here … I don’t think there’s any doubt that there’s an appetite at Gordon for a paper that’s informative and lively, and reflects what students are thinking and talking about.”