<ent-run blog about all things Carleton is gearing to launch next term. The site, tentatively named The Daily Knight, will feature Carleton event information, student blogs and campus news.
Its founders hope the blog will encourage deeper discussion of issues and events on campus after they first occur.
To attend scheduled meetings and discussions, “you have to take time out of your day,” said Jonathan Carter ’10, who is starting the blog with Dan Lindvall ’10. “If you had this web site, you could at any time continue the discussion.”
The two created a survey in January to start the process and had nearly 150 students respond.
“We got a lot of good feedback,” Carter said. “We found that people wanted a really, really robust campus activities feature online with new media features included.”
That prompted what will be a three-part site including campus activities information, a student blog and campus news, which will largely include content from The Carletonian and The Carl.
On campus, “there’s a blend of culture and news, so we’ll try to strike a balance,” Lindvall said. “We’ll maybe have a staff of dedicated posters, but we really want it to be open to the Carleton community in terms of deepening and broadening the conversations.”
Because the purpose of the site is to further discussion, comments will be highly encouraged and largely self-selective, with editors reviewing them only to stop spam and obscenity or personal attacks.
“If you want to write an article, if you have good points, regardless of how we feel about it, it will go up,” Carter said.
He hopes to schedule an information meeting for students interested in blogging regularly late this term or early in the spring.
In addition to content from The Carletonian and The Carl, the site will also collaborate with the Cave, KRLX and any other campus groups who would like to advertise in a variety of formats. Carter also hopes to include interviews with professors, comps students and “under the radar Carls” with interesting stories.
The Daily Knight will operate largely under the infrastructure of the current Carletonian web site – with help from web editor Shane Auerbach ’10 and the Web Services Group – in order to start with a base readership, but Carter says the key to its success is that people begin reading right away.
“We hope that this becomes not only a clearing house for information, but a place where people can go to talk about things they care about,” Lindvall said. “And maybe a Lady Gaga video or two.”