Print media is dead; yet here you are, beginning a new school year and picking up the first issue of The BG News, your campus newspaper.

Maybe you’ve never read a newspaper before in your life. Maybe you prefer to log onto Yahoo! News and check out the latest headlines. Either way, I am proud to announce, your life is about to change. Or at least that’s my hope.

The BG News is not your average paper. Fellow students report, write, edit, design and produce each issue, Monday through Friday. Students run the website, devise the content and take the heat when problems arise.

We don’t do it for the money or the glory, believe me. Most of us are aspiring journalists who just want to keep the campus and community informed.

Every day you will find stories that directly affect your life — from campus events to tuition raises, from construction updates to controversial spending. CNN, Fox News and other major media outlets will not be talking about the students, staff and facilities which surround us.

And your voices comprise our stories. Your letters to the editor and guest columns provide dissent, discussion and conversation to our forum section. Your faces fill our feature photos. Your interviews give student perspectives to all our stories. Should I continue?

As we all know, print media is changing. The BG News is no exception. Though the paper is turning 90 this year, the pages and content hardly resemble that of its predecessors. We have embraced the Internet and transformed it from a taboo term in this business to another form of connection. Facebook us. Tweet at us. Comment on our online stories. Submit photos you’ve taken. View our videos, picture galleries and content not found in the print edition but solely on bgviews.com.

We don’t print yesterday’s news. We post breaking events on our site. And then we expound upon them the next day. When anything significant happens, you can count on The BG News to give you a voice, to provide a place for you to question and comment, to connect you to the experiences around you and maybe even share something you wouldn’t otherwise know without flipping through our pages.

So as you settle in and begin your college career, take a look around and expand your horizons. Hopefully that means opening up our work every day to gather the latest campus and city news and pulling up the news website to satisfy your need for online content.

And, if nothing else, the daily Sudokus provide an excellent distraction for that dragging lecture.