During the past year, the Daily Egyptian has made several stabs at changing up our formula. For a calendar year we ceased Friday publication and made our Thursday edition longer, calling it the Weekender.

When we chose to discontinue that edition in December 2013, we knew we had to take a different route to adapt to the rapidly evolving world of journalism. We also knew that as the Board of Trustees considers the $9 Media Fee the Undergraduate Student Government approved in December, we needed to work on reaching our readers where they get their news, and overwhelmingly our generation has moved to technology to learn and discover.

Therefore, you will not see this column anywhere in print.

Instead, you’re reading the first edition of our e-Daily Egyptian, or e-DE, a one day a week online-only endeavor. We’ve done away with the page format for these articles and instead present them to you on a single website. On Fridays www.dailyegyptian.com will receive a makeover into this website, full of content that uses the advanced technology at our fingertips.

Whereas a normal article in our print edition might have a graphic with statistics, here you’ll find an interactive graphic or even a presentation on the subject. Getting the words right is the most crucial part of telling the story, but it’s also our job to make the content as creative and accessible as possible. It’s all about becoming engaged with the subject matter.

Album reviews will include clips of the referenced songs, or links to where the album can be purchased. Movie reviews will have trailers posted with them. When you read a sports story or column that references athletes, we’ll provide you with instant access to that athlete’s statistics. There’s no reason the info you can gain from one of our pieces needs to stop at the bottom of the page. By gearing our content toward this mindset, we feel we’re taking a giant step in modernizing the Daily Egyptian for our audience as a whole.

You’ll also notice the return of our Daily Egyptian “mascot,” Gus Bode. He and his quips have been absent from the paper for a few years, but we figured there’s no reason a new venture should completely do away with the old. Resurrecting Gus is our way of respecting where the Daily Egyptian has been and envisioning where it can go in the future.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Because errors are an inevitable part of “trial and error,” not everything we try will work, but that does not mean we stop trying. You can reach me with your suggestions at [email protected] or on Twitter @kburgstahler_DE. In fact, all of our reporters and editors are available to follow on Twitter, as we are using social media as a method of delivery to a greater extent than ever before.  Have a look around, and be a part of the DE revolution!

Karsten Burgstahler can also be reached at 536-3311 ext. 254.