The Roundup at New Mexico State University has launched its new BLOX site – the first of many college newspapers that have signed on with TownNews.com in the past few months.
In April, TownNews.com launched its first campaign designed specifically to reach out to campus media. The Roundup was one of the first papers to sign after the campaign started, and several more papers are set to launch new websites soon using the BLOX content management system.
“We knew we needed to change, but it was the daunting task of finding the right fit,” said Jon Blazak, The Roundup’s editor in chief. “But it’s really not as hard as you think it would be at the beginning of the process.”
TownNews.com, which hosts over 1,500 websites for newspapers across the country, has partnered with college newspapers for several years, including The Independent Florida Alligator and the Iowa State Daily. But TownNews.com expanded its college presence on the advice of Mark Witherspoon, editorial adviser at Iowa State, earlier this year.
Witherspoon believed that the flexibility of the BLOX content management system, and ability to generate revenue, would be a good fit for more college newspapers.
That flexibility was one of the reasons that Blazak acted quickly to sign on with TownNews.com in June, saying The Roundup’s previous host was “one of the least user-friendly interfaces.” But there were other reasons BLOX appealed to Blazak.
“I think it also was the affordability,” he said. “We were basically on (our previous vendor) because what I considered the high cost of switching to anything else. When we started talking about pricing for BLOX, it was almost too affordable not to switch.”
More college newspapers that have signed on with BLOX – from large dailies to small weeklies – are set to launch new sites in the coming months.
