- Jamie Freestone
When I hear about anything, I look for its website. If it doesn’t have a website, I don’t think about it ever again. That goes for companies, events, artists, organisations and especially: publications. If someone Googles Woroni and all that comes up is a note about a coming website, they might be forgiven for thinking it’s not a serious operation.
And that’s the real point of my article and indeed all recent discussions about Woroni’s future. At the core of all debates over independence, the constitution, format and online presence — at the centre of all these debates is the question: how serious of an operation is Woroni? It’s an open question, but my feeling is that it’s quite serious. It’s not super serious; it’s not Harvard Crimson serious, but it is website serious.
The thing about websites, though, is that they generally don’t get built. When they do get built, they generally fall into ruin pretty quickly. In fact, even print editions of Woroni, have, let’s face it, been pretty hard to produce over the years. I can tell you that recent editors Fletcher, Wiblin; Dawson, Lee; Brereton, Cubis and Gratton have all experienced the struggle involved with maintaining momentum over the course of a year, trying to extract a fortnightly piece of writing from undergraduate students. If it weren’t for the especial dedication of the editors themselves, the print edition obviously wouldn’t get off the ground. That’s not to say that writers and section editors are lazy, but they simply don’t have as much invested in the product as the elected editors.
That’s the main reason I like the idea of a larger group of editors. If nothing else, it increases the pool of people who are completely dedicated to getting the edition out there. Editors pull all-nighters, spend their own money and frequently sacrifice their studies to get something done for Woroni. This is why I’m convinced that the only way to ensure a well maintained website is to have one of these editors designated as an editor of online content. I’m not wholly convinced of the exact breakdown of duties outlined in the draft constitution, but the one role that should be cordoned off, just to guarantee results, is the online editor.
People talk of expanding Woroni. I like ambition, but in a university with a not so large undergraduate population and no journalism program, it seems unrealistic to presume the print edition can expand significantly beyond its current scope. If Woroni is to expand its influence, then it will be as an online identity. The target for those who seek to make Woroni bigger should be to make the website a hub for students, a website they look at every day along with Facebook and their emails, just to stay in touch with what’s happening. For it to be this important to students’ lives, it must be updated daily. It must reach into the ANU community (and that means halls and residences) to provide ultra-local news and events. It must contain all the information a student would want, to keep apprised of what’s happening on and off campus. It must link closely to the ANU website and perhaps also contain a certain amount of room for users to get involved. Only by creating a Woroni web community will the amount of people who are interested in Woroni appreciably increase.
This vision of an ideal website is crudely drawn here, but even if it is in fact a pipedream, a website is needed for Woroni because it’s currently 2010. It will soon be 2011. That is enough of a reason to insist that a website is crucial. And from excruciating experience I can testify that a website will not spring into existence as some kind of spontaneous phenomenon emerging from the good will of Woroni’s editors and writers. For this reason one of the editors must shoulder the responsibility themselves, if not for building the website, then at least for maintaining and updating it throughout the year.
