For the second time this year, The Tufts Daily has received amakeover. The paper is unveiling a refurbished tuftsdaily.comtoday, eight months after overhauling the layout of its printedition with a fresher and more modern design.
"We wanted a more sophisticated website to go with the moreprofessional look of the redesigned paper," Editor-in-Chief EthanAustin said. "We've had some problems in the past [with the oldwebsite] and we wanted a more professional, more reliable,newer-looking website."
In addition to increased reliability and better archives, thewebsite offers new features such as crossword and jumble answersonline, a daily e-mail digest of headlines, and interactive polls.Users will also be able to discuss articles in online forums.
Former editor-in-chief Adam Cooper spearheaded the project withonline editor Dave Nagler. "I wanted to launch a new website withthe new design," he said. "I'm glad to be able to complete itbefore graduating."
The Daily opted to work with online publishing company DigitalPartners rather than continuing to maintain the websitein-house.
Digital Partners, based in Lincoln, Neb., serves campuspublications such as the Columbia Spectator, the DailyNorthwestern, and the Daily Pennsylvanian by providing the back-endtechnology which puts their content online.
"We considered two website companies and evaluated rebuildingthe site on our own," Cooper said. "In the end, we chose DigitalPartners because they combine a great deal of online expertise witha collaborative approach with campus newspapers."
Besides a cleaner, sophisticated look, the new website will helpdefray some of the Daily's costs: "The website creates anadditional revenue source for the Daily as it will feature nationaladvertising sold by Digital Partners," Cooper said.
The Daily will also be able to sell online advertising to localorganizations and businesses.
"We provide the technology and environment to interact withschools across the country," said David Hahn, CEO of DigitalPartners.
Publications that work with Digital Partners become "campuspartners" and part of the Open News Initiative, in which they canshare news with other student newspapers.
Hahn stresses that Digital Partners is a "news initiative, notdirect marketing initiative."
"We have a very strong privacy policy, one of the best around,"Hahn said. "We never give anyone's information... [information is]strictly only used for news, not spam or e-mail campaigns."
The Digital Partners facility is "state-of-the-art" and provides24-7 back up support, according to Hahn. With a 99.9 percent uptimeguarantee, students, alumni and other visitors will have no troubleaccessing the site.
Austin said that the new website will only strengthen theDaily's role as the campus' daily news provider. "We need to bedoing anything we can to make it easier for Tufts students to findout about issues that are important to them. And the newtuftsdaily.com does just that."
