Online options

Between 17,000 and 18,000 copies of The Indiana Daily Student are printed each day and delivered to a multitude of locations in and around IU and Bloomington. While that might be how a large portion of our readers get our news, it's not the only way -- and it's not the whole picture of everything the newsroom produces.\nIdsnews.com, our Web site, features copies of all the stories and photographs that appear in the newspaper (as well as an archive that dates back to 2000) and additional online-only features and breaking news updates. \nEach night, members of the online production team come into the newsroom shortly before the midnight print deadline. Once here, the production team begins cutting and pasting the stories and photos from the print edition into the online interface.\nBut in addition to the print content, we've striven to continue an initiative editors have worked toward in the past few years to present a wide array of online-only options for our Web visitors. We've posted videos of IU Student Association debates and the Mike Davis press conference as well as extra photos of events like IU Sing, the Ann Coulter lecture and the men's swimming Big Ten championship. Our membership in The Associated Press has also allowed us to debut a weekly gallery of offbeat or interesting AP photographs (known as "stand alones") and to present a comprehensive guide to the Oscars through photos and AP stories (supplemented by reaction from our own IDS columnists). \nFurthermore, our Web site allows us to post relevant documents relating to stories we cover in the paper. For example, when IU President Adam Herbert announced major restructuring plans for the University, we posted PDFs of questions faculty members circulated.\nOur opinion desk also hired an online-only columnist for the first time this semester. Traditionally, applications for columnists far outnumber the available slots in the paper, so giving an online-only position to Adam Sedia only made sense. Sedia's column runs each week with a red label, differentiating it from the columns from the print edition. \nOur Web site also gives us an opportunity to interact with readers and allow them to submit content. When a fire burned the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house earlier this semester, we asked readers for photos or videos and received a number of contributions.\nBut we're definitely not satisfied yet. Our Web site is still very much a work in progress. From increased video footage to Podcasts to consistent, immediate updates for breaking news, we hope to include even more online-only options. \nWe cherish reader input, so please e-mail us at letters@indiana.edu if you have ideas for features you'd like to see online. And, if you thought the print edition was all we had to offer, log on to www.idsnews.com and peruse the many features already offered.