Spring 1995
Like something out of "The Jetsons," the journalism department at SF State is zooming into the space age - blasting off for frolicsome high adventure with amazing devices like lightbulbs, microwave ovens and tupperware. But wait! As if that dizzying b urst of futuristic technology wasn't enough to entertain and delight you, we have also established a presence on the Internet.
It's true: We are part of the well-publicized and frequently maligned creeping cyber-glut - another glob of digital gristle clogging up the information super-artery.
So if information overload is what you seek, you've come to the right department.
Our site on the World Wide Web now features (or will soon feature):
Th e web site is administered primarily by sophomore journalism student Steve Thoemke, under the direction of Journalism Department chair Erna Smith and computer lab manager Gary Barker.
Thoemke also administers a web site at Santa Rosa Junior College. He got involved with the World Wide Web in the spring of '94, and became a co-administrator, he said, of one of the first 500-or-so web sites in the world, within a week and a half o f discovering such a thing as the web existed.
"I thought it was pretty cool, so I just jumped right on it," he said.
Thoemke is a full-time student at SF State and also takes classes full-time at Santa Rosa Junior College, where he puts all the articles and photos from its weekly student newspaper, The Oak Leaf, online.
"I format about 50 pages a week - that's mostly the arti cles from the two newspapers (Golden Gater and The Oak Leaf)," Thoemke said.
He said he knew from the Golden Gater's abandoned Gopher site on the Internet that there was a pre-existing interest in getting the publications online at SF State, though not much pre-existing know-how. Simultaneously, Barker was learning w hat was necessary to get the publications online.
"When he showed up out of the blue, Steve gave us a jump-start," Barker said.
Thoemke didn't know for certain whether there was any continuing interest in estab lishing an online presence for the department or its publications. "I didn't know who to talk to, so I just basically looked at the photos on the wall (outside the journalism department office). Professor Johnson happened to have office hours at the time so I just went and banged on his door. He's the first guy I talked to. He just basically pointed me to Erna Smith."
Smith and Barker had been discussing for weeks before Thoemke's arrival the sorts of things they wanted to make available on the web.
To connect to the SF State journalism department's site on the World Wide Web, point your web-browsing software to http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu
One advantage of the department having its own web site is that we can do pretty much whatever we want to with it. One of the things department chair Erna Smith wanted to do was have students create a new, entirely online publication, from scratch, un der deadline pressure.
And so was born the Way New News Online.
With its name derived from an article in Wired magazine, the WNNO was brainstormed by Smith and computer lab manager Gary Barker, and by San Jose Mercury News assistant features edit or Marcelo Rodriguez (who had prior online publication experience from his stint with the San Francisco Free Press Online).
Thanks to the speedy efforts of editor in chief Kerri Regan, photo editor A.C. Santos, three advisers, three section editors, 13 staff writers, a slew of photographers, and many other students and volunteers, the WNNO wa s able to provide nearly instantaneous online coverage of the Society of Professional Journalists Region 11 conference.
To connect to the Way New News Online, point your web-browsing software to http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/spj/spj.htm