By Elizabeth Jenkins · Contributing Writer
The Collegian enters the modern age, launching its official website Friday.
Boasting 135 years as a newspaper, The Collegian has won many awards over the years and has kept the black and white alive on campus. Current members of The Collegian see this move as essential not only for the publication’s growth, but for preparing future journalists.
“It was time for The Collegian to adapt to modern trends,” Editor-in-Chief Matthew Purucker said. “The Collegian is a training ground for its writers and editors to practice skills in preparation for a future career in journalism or a related field.”
Purucker said expanding The Collegian’s presence online will allow the newspaper to publish more stories with the same quality the publication is known for. For now, The Collegian plans to run print and digital copies in tandem.
For Collegian Advisor and Director of College Communications, Nick Hildebrand, the website offers an exciting way to broaden The Collegian’s horizons and audience.
“I’m excited about The Collegian’s new website and its ability to take the news, features, sports and opinion journalism that the student staff produces on campus to a larger audience off campus,” Hildebrand said. “The current staff, led by Matthew Purucker, deserves all the credit for developing the website.”
While already online as a digital flipbook on the publishing platform Issuu, The Collegian website will offer more interactive options.
“We modeled it after professional news outlet websites, but we focused on catering the website more toward smartphone use than they do,” Purucker said.
Purucker expressed excitement about the potential of the digital medium for the future of The Collegian.
“We also hope to expand into doing more visual and audio content — more social media, more videos, maybe a podcast, who knows? We’d probably need some more students with those skills, but I believe the website allows us to do much more than we previously could with just the print edition,” he said.
Some students, however, foresee possible difficulties in the change. Madison Miller, a copy editor for The Collegian, commented that, with both an Issuu page and a newspaper archive, the website would have to work harder to be relevant to readers’ needs.
The website also contains a backlog dating back to the fall 2025 semester. He said The Collegian does not plan to add more, citing the “hit or miss” nature of some of the older school newspaper records.
Miller noted that a larger backlog would appeal to readers interested in The Collegian over the years or its takes on major world events that occurred during its more than century-long publication history.
Purucker said he first proposed the project in 2024, but work started in 2026.
“It wasn’t until I became editor-in-chief in May that it got off the ground,” Purucker said. “Ian and I have been working pretty hard on it since.”
Purucker concluded that the new website provided a great opportunity to students seeking to serve God through journalism.
“I believe the website allows us to do much more than we previously could with just the print edition,” Purucker said.
