For over 120 years, The Crimson White has been the student newspaper of The University of Alabama. Over the years, thanks to hundreds of talented editors and staffers before me, we’ve brought you, the students of the University, the news that you need, from unearthing The Machine in 1928 to covering the tornado outbreak on April 27, 2011, to The Final Barrier in 2013 to the Tutwiler lockdown last year. For the past several years, a dedicated staff has worked to put that news in one of the premier college newspapers in the country, four times a week.
Times have changed, and until now, we haven’t changed with them. As more and more of our readers and peers leave our newspapers on the stands in favor of digital media, we’ve rarely met them there. Despite the fact we all get news from our smartphones, most of this staff doesn’t have The Crimson White’s news app, much less our readership. Our digital presence has thrived in times of breaking news, but day-to-day, we’ve largely operated more like that paper in 1928 than a 21st century news organization.
That ends today. Beginning Monday, August 24, 2015, The Crimson White newspaper will cease to exist.
Instead, The Crimson White Media Group will publish its printed product, a news magazine, twice a week. In our weekday edition, we’ll give you the best news writing we have, diving into all the news from the last weekend and all the special issues you care about. Our Weekend Edition on Thursday will be your complete guide to Thursday through Sunday in Tuscaloosa, including the best culture and UA sports coverage in town.
Digitally, thecrimsonwhite.com will be the premier source for news, multimedia features, up-to-date cultural calendars and content you care about in this city, bar none. AL.com is pulling its reporters out of Tuscaloosa. We’re adding entire new divisions to our staff.
We’re adding a video wing to bring you documentary features and live coverage of the events and figures you care about. Every week, that video staff will provide you an opportunity to speak your mind with “Student Sound-off” on campus. We’re adding a podcast channel to provide you with the kind of deep-dive journalism and analysis you want to listen to on the way to class. We’re adding digital divisions to bring you blogs on fashion, music, film, women’s sports, data journalism and much more. We’re relaunching mycrimsonwhite.tumblr.com as an anonymous Q-and-A blog monitored 24/7. Ask, and you will receive. If we don’t know, we’ll find out. And we’re launching Crimson White Events to bring us down from our hill onto campus to hear from you.
And we want you, no matter what part of campus you come from, to be a part of this. If you have an idea, The Crimson White Media Group wants to represent it.
And as Nick Saban put it, rest assured: “This is not the end. This is the beginning.”
Sean Landry is the Editor-in-Chief of The Crimson White.
