“Hey, look at this. The cover says ‘www.dartmouthindependent.com,’ but I got into Dartmouth, so I know that what I am holding in my hands here is very much not a website. What the hell? First H-Croo did that funny show where they used that song ‘Grillz’ to explain how to use a Trangia stove instead of talking about boring first aid crap, and now this? When do the lies end?” Hold it right there dear bemused oh-ten or otherwise-clueless reader! You are not, in fact, reading an on-paper publication, even though it may seem like you could theoretically make some sort of marijuana-inhalation device out of its pages! The Dartmouth Independent does come out in print once in awhile, generally once or twice a term. But TDI is much more than that: we’re a weekly opinion webzine, a forum for every political persuasion this side of fascism, and Dartmouth’s leading commentator on all things College and cultural. It’s Slate with more bad rap references, Salon with more Facebook friends, or Model Railroading without all that railroading. It is, by turns, lighthearted (see page 4 and 5 for a dating Crossfire), incisive (see page 11 for a JetBlue racial-profiling article), and controversial (see page 16 for a dig at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum) - unlike at some of Dartmouth’s other publications, our staff members don’t all agree with one another.

But why online? I read somewhere recently (online) a comment speculating that had Brit Hadden and Henry Luce partnered up to found a magazine today, TIME would be online-only. Essentially, today’s journalistic pioneers are skipping the middleman and publishing straight to the web. No major publication, Dartmouth or otherwise, does not maintain a website. Almost all of them duplicate every print article on it. Most add web-only content. Many even run blogs. This is still a point when print magazines are considered to have an online component; at TDI we’re just inverting that phenomenon.

By almost any standard, this way works better. We can, and have, scooped events within hours of them happening, we can maintain a fluid publication schedule to post content whenever we want, and we can (and will) immediately notify you when new articles are up. The only downside is that you can’t pick TDI up to read at Food Court when all your friends totally just finished eating and you want to look like you’re eating alone on purpose so that you can concentrate that much harder on an article about Student Assembly.

We don’t have the capacity, but the most popular opinion sites—blogs, webzines, whatever you call them—update their content as much as two dozen times a day. Where does that leave print quarterlies, monthlies, and even weeklies? We’re already able to produce issues more often than every other Dartmouth publication, excepting The Dartmouth. Cyberspace allows the exchange of discourse to be instantaneous, where posters and riposters try to make some sense out of life billions of times a day. Even all of online journalism is only a small part of that, but if you don’t think it’s important now, you will.