Hello fellow Eagles,

Welcome back from winter break!

I wrote a letter in the fall detailing a minor shift in The Easterner’s digital presence. In the past, all stories (besides breaking news and some sports) were posted online gradually throughout the week after the print edition came out on Wednesdays.

This year, in an effort to make the website more current and consistent, we set out to post stories as they were completed instead of waiting for the print product to come out first.

So how are we doing with this initiative?

Like most things in life, there’s been both some good and some bad. The hardest part has been making sure there is content posted on the website every single day. The human nature of it is to still get everything done at the last minute, or before we go to print. To aid in this, each section of the paper is assigned a couple days each week that they are required to post on.

Our readership data shows that this is working well. Although we’ve only seen marginal improvements in average clicks, they are now spread throughout the week. Last year, they were mainly isolated to the couple days of online posting. Readers are also tending to stay longer once they’re on the site.

This has helped our social media presence as well. Now when readers access our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter feeds, they know to expect up-to-date coverage. Be sure to follow our social media accounts: “The Easterner” on Facebook, “the_easterner” on Instagram, “@_TheEasterner” on Twitter for general content and breaking news, and “@EasternerSports” on Twitter for sports coverage.

As the school year continues, we will work to improve the digital-first plan, as well as expanding into different methods of reporting, such as podcasts and videos. Speaking of our digital presence, The Easterner has a new web domain, theeasterner.org, so be sure to head there from now on for our news.

It’s already been an eventful year at EWU, including administration changes, midterm elections, the PUB opening and football taking second in the FCS playoffs.

There’s much more excitement and heartbreak to come as the year goes on, and The Easterner remains committed to telling the stories of our community in an unbiased, quality manner.