The Online Revolution

In the days before the Internet, newspapers were just that--news on paper. Nothing more, nothing less. The newspaper had its say when it hit the streets, and that was that. But the Internet has changed all of this. Now, newspapers can report on news before the actual dead-tree-matter gets inked up. This was the case on Monday, April 10, when the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Citizen were both giving updates about that day's downtown pro-immigrant march that got out of hand.

And, in what was essentially a first, so was the Tucson Weekly.

A 500-word recap of the protest by Saxon Burns--whose expanded coverage of the march can be found in this issue--was actually one of two breaking stories we posted online on Monday, April 10, accompanied by an e-mail newsletter flash to our electronic-newsletter subscribers. The other story was an earlier version of my story about allegations of sports/academic fraud at the UA. (The Citizen's coverage of the same hubbub--which in that article was called an incidence of "favoritism"--was the top story in that paper the following day.)

While the Weekly will always keep its longer-term, more in-depth focus, and daily-style coverage is not part of our long-term plans, don't be surprised to see more Web exclusives and breaking-news updates at tucsonweekly.com. After all, if something is important enough--and, in our humble opinion, both the downtown march and the brewing UA controversy were--then why should we wait for the print version? Especially with the upcoming launch of our Weekly blog, tucsonweekly.com will become a destination you'll want to visit more than once a week.

If you haven't bookmarked our award-winning Web site yet, that's something you might want to consider doing.