Kristen Bailey
Published: August 23, 2005
PJC’s student newspaper, The Corsair, has revamped its online component, adding multimedia and breaking news and sports to eCorsair.com.
Rather than being confined to a print paper, eCorsair.com will attempt to bring stories to life for PJC’s students through a combination of audio and video stories as well as photo galleries. Pirates fans also can find the latest in sports coverage, including interviews from coaches and players.
“There are limits in newspapers and in television broadcasts, in terms of both time and space,” Corsair Adviser Christina Drain said. “Multimedia has so many facets. It’s more a way of ‘telling’ a story, rather than just providing information. It’s almost like a mini documentary. We could interview a new athlete recruit or every day people like the groundskeeper. Its like a little slice of what life is like here on campus.”
Enhancements will include changing eCorsair.com’s current “newspaper-like” appearance, according to Editor Matthew Foster.
“The current eCorsair.com is basically an online version of the paper. The main goal is to turn the website into something people will want to visit frequently because we’re going to have new stuff uploaded constantly,” he said. “We’re planning on adding online content like comic strips, spin off stories of the things you might read in the paper, polls, audio clips, movie clips, and flash presentations and animation.”
Not only will eCorsair.com hopefully attract more readers to its constantly evolving site, but it will also open up a medium for students in fields other than journalism as well.
“We’re going to be able to draw people in from the photo department, graphic arts, multimedia, broadcast journalism – people from other area of the campus who might not have thought about the career field beforehand. It exposes them to journalism,” Drain said.
With students from various departments throughout PJC working together, eCorsair.com promises to make up for what the print Corsair lacks in timeliness.
“If a print issue hits stands on Wednesday and the next issue doesn’t come out for another two weeks, we’re hoping to have massive updates every couple of days during those two weeks. If there’s a breaking story on campus, you’ll read about it on eCorsair.com first,” Foster said.
Foster says the Corsair staff hopes to attract readers through the improved website.
“I really would love for this online component of the Corsair to become a hub where students can go to daily to get the latest on news, entertainment, and going on’s around campus. The possibilities are almost limitless in what we can do. Believe me when I say there’s a lot in store this year.”