Here is a great question about Online Publishing and Production's new project In_the_Loop from one of my colleagues. I liked the description I sent him, so I decided to include it here. On Jan 27, 2004, at 7:09 PM, hschlossberg wrote:

Barb: Interesting. One question: Who's maintaining the site around the clock? Is your next class going to be supplying the content? Interesting project. --HS.

Here is my response, and the In_the_Loop concept at this time:

Dear Howard, Thanks for asking. In_the_loop is not a "newspaper" so it doesn't need to update round the clock. As long as our server is working, In_the_Loop ( http://nexus.colum.edu/class/online ) will work. Next semester we add new major stories twice during the semester. Interactive stuff will update more frequently. Think "comic book" in the sense of something you read and return to. Like a comic book series, there will the old favorite stories you re-read, as well as material that is updated on an ongoing basis. Not a daily, but a periodical. As we increase the number of "interactive" features like blogs that readers can respond to, it will encourage viewer/users to come back to visit. Like the Poynter blogs, these will be about specific subjects (would love a sports enthusiast to take the course and run a blog for sports fans...) Each semester the class will supply some content themselves. We will solicit content from the "public" too. Students will cull and edit the freelance work to fit with each update's theme. There is one class that will be doing political reporting, and we will be creating a special section for their work that highlights voting and politics. We will ask your sports reporters for stories as long as they are of importance to the 60000 students in the loop. It will be a great opportunity for students. We finally have the lab, equipment, and homework lab to support a real online publication. The closest existing thing that I can refer you to (and our model in some ways) is spark-online . Our photos aren't so "arty" but they are very good, don't you think? They are in the gallery. barbara i