by Jeffrey Mu
If you ever walk into the Bell Online office on a Thursday morning, you’ll find an oval table spanning the length of the room, complete with a couple sofas in the back adjacent to the windows. You may find the editors at work teaching new staffers the gist of using Camayak, or the moderators talking amongst themselves on a couple spinning chairs. Typically, the Bell Online operates the way any newspaper office does, the usually lively chatter and typing, and people to look all over for the next story to cover. Back then, our organization was arranged in much different a manner as we operate today. If you walked into our office back then, you would find a huge duct tape border plastered to our wall, along with the names and articles being published, and certainly, less staffers sitting in the office. Up on our website, you would find a small number of articles, and only a few pictures to go along with those. But most recognizably, you would see physical articles sitting on the oval desk, in its primal newspaper format, given out to all those who might want it. Today, you would still find some of those newspapers sitting on our table, as well as a large archive book. You would still be able to marvel at how the tape border system used to work for us. But instead of the physical issue, you would see these changes to our system of working:
1. An advanced, online version of the newspaper with its expanded photos and articles, and the newest posts up to date.
2. A lively club with staff writers diligently working to give you the best content available.
3. Collaborations with other Bellarmine clubs to bring you more of those aspects that you came to Bellarmine for – a diverse and massive community with varying interests.
4. A refined and honed-in editing process that we go through to publish content.
5. An increased number of articles produced every quarter, published before the events happen – a news source which you can rely on.
Since the website started in 2015, we have committed ourselves to bring you the best and most relevant information to be covered on campus, delivered right to your neighborhood website. But aside from that, there are a few other features that we would like to add. Though our old system may have done some work for us, at a rapid online pace, we are constantly assessing the aesthetic quality of our website, and we strive to update you every quarter about important changes to the website and changes which you might expect or be looking forward to. As for those, here are the changes we are projecting to be made over this second quarter:
1. A first collaboration with the Bell Writing collective, and their first short story publications online.
2. A brand-new humor/satire column.
3. Continuation of casual articles like How well do you know Bellarmine’s campus? , and some more satirical articles like the difficulty rankings of different classes.
4. Consistent article publishing, with a feature to notify you when articles are published.
5. New functionality of the sidebars and improved menu items, as well as links to Bellarmine’s own social media.
Though our formatting and aspects of the website might change, our mission does not vary one bit. Here at Bell Online, we are committed to bringing you the articles of the best quality, over the shortest period of time. As an editor of the Bell Online, I can assure you that the changes we plan to make in the future will revolve around bringing you the articles you hope to see. And that’s always going to be an Online promise!