Letter from the editor: In regards to Nov. 17 website difficulties

Two nights ago, brave Oregon State students of color shared their experiences with racism in front of an audience of their peers, faculty and community members. It was an emotional evening and an important event for the state of campus culture.

The Daily Barometer was there during the “Speak Out” providing coverage for yesterday’s paper. Before we left the office on Monday (actually Tuesday morning) after a late night, we published the article on the Barometer’s website and sent the paper to the press. All seemed to be fine, as far as the Barometer was concerned.

If you were reading the paper the past couple of days you may have noticed mysterious ads asking you to look for something new coming from the Barometer today. Well the surprise is out, we got a new website and planned on unveiling it today. Well, the website actually went live yesterday at around 11 a.m.

The problem we didn’t think about Monday night was that we posted the content for yesterday’s paper on our old website. All the content from our old website had been switched over to the new website Monday afternoon, but the content we published after that didn’t get transferred. When the new website went live yesterday, our old website’s content went offline.

So while most of the content had been saved, the articles from yesterday’s paper were lost from our website yesterday morning. Among those articles was the “Addressing campus equality,” the story on Monday night’s “Speak Out” event.

The article had already been shared on Facebook from our old website, and when the new website went live, the Facebook link died. Now, obviously, this looked pretty sketchy.

After students had the courage to speak openly about major issues on this campus, the student newspaper’s article on the event suddenly disappears.

People noticed – and rightfully so.

I want to apologize for the lack of foresight when we uploaded the article to our old website instead of our new website, and for the delay in reuploading the story onto the proper website. No harm was intended, and I am personally sorry.

Thank you for those who reached out, those who asked to know why the story was no longer online. Thank you for holding this paper accountable. We are here to represent the students of this campus. If you ever feel like we are not being representative, let us know. We are listening.

Kat Kothen

Editor-in-Chief

The Daily Barometer

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