The students at the campus newspaper I advise faced a world of tech hell the past 48 hours. Their server crashed and died. Then they found out the backup server also failed. A tech guy put together a makeshift system for them and the people from the company who publish the paper said it should work for outputting the pages. Unfortunately, they were wrong.
After hours of trying to tweak and resend the pages, the editor in chief and executive editor were faced with a horrible decision. Do they put out a print edition with horrible photos and poor quality, or do they cancel the print edition and put out only an online edition?
They chose to do the online edition only. It was a hard choice, but in the end, they didn’t want to put out a bad paper. It was a decision that I think nearly broke some of their hearts.
Their experience highlights some of the best of journalism. If it was going to be bad, they wanted no part of it. They want quality. I hope these standards stick with them throughout their careers and they never settle for less.
journajunkie 