SOMERS - There is no isolated ivory tower for the people who put out The Ranger News, the student newspaper of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Budget reality has hit there, too.

In the middle of October, the newspaper ceased printing and transformed itself into a purely electronic publication, said Jo Kirst, the paper's editor in chief.

The paper was spending about $22,000 a year for 30 issues, one each week during a semester, Kirst said. There were about 2,000 readers.

"It just got to be too expensive," she said.

So last year, she said, a group of Ranger staffers proposed that the paper become an online-only publication. The Student University Fee Allocations Committee approved the idea and would spend about $4,000 less per year, Kirst said. Student fees paid most of the cost for the publication.

The Ranger News decision isn't typical among college papers, Logan Aimone, executive director of the Associated Collegiate Press in Minneapolis. The organization provides journalism education to help college students publish school newspapers.

"I've only heard of maybe two or three campuses that have done that, and in every case it's because of budget," Aimone said.

It took time to set up the Web site, primarily because putting out a printed newspaper was so time-consuming, Kirst said.

Stories were due on Thursdays, Kirst said. "And all day Sunday, as long as it would take, we would put the paper together in InDesign (a computer program) and print it out until I was satisfied."

With the print publication gone, she said, there's much more time for the staff to be involved in other facets of campus life. Yet she has some

regrets.

"I miss being covered in ink. I mean I personally distributed all the copies. I miss having my hands covered with ink and smelling like newspaper," she said.

Now the task is to tell people where they can find campus news. Although electronic publication opens The Ranger News to a wider audience and makes it more accessible to people off campus, Kirst said, she has heard concerns from people who can't find the

publication.

"Hopefully by the end of the semester we'll be completely marketed on campus," she said.

Visit the paper at:

http://therangernews.com