After years of struggling with a finicky, and at times downright defunct, website, the Review received word this week that the Student Finance Committee has allocated funds for the rebirth of oberlinreview.org. Although we indeed ad hoc’d for these funds, it was hardly out of a burning desire to focus on innovative media; and though we’re pleased to have received them, the task of reconstructing our online presence is more of a slow, painful push into the 21st century than an excited leap.

Our website’s current state of disrepair has given all of us on senior staff the chance to have a necessary — and long overdue — conversation about the role that technology should play in the production of the paper.

Improving our print edition has always been and continues to be our top priority. In the past few years, we’ve focused our energy on increasing the quality of our content through expanding our types of coverage, as well as improving writing and the paper’s design. And we’re perhaps more cognizant than anyone that we have much more work to do to create the type of newspaper that meets these goals each week.

The root of our resistance to employing newfangled strategies is the attachment on the part of many Review staffers to a decidedly romantic ideal of print journalism. After all, it’s our love for the elegance of language and a powerful nostalgia for newsprint-stained fingers that initially drew us to spend an unhealthy share of our college careers in the basement of Burton Hall. Because of these sentimental attachments to a trope of journalism that initiated its descent before most of our births, charting our online path has felt like an unwelcome chore and distraction.

But in recognizing that these attachments are incongruous with the state of modern journalism — which generally prioritizes pithy tweets and up-to-the-second coverage over the in-depth news writing of yesteryear — we have made a small step forward. By incorporating some of the positive aspects, of technology we can gain a broader presence and be more accountable to our readers while staying true to our ultimate commitment to informing our community.