Today’s edition of The Oxford Observer will be the last.
This news site started eight years ago to bring local news to the Oxford community. It was after the Oxford Press folded into the Journal-News and residents wanted more local news.
Oxford was then a news desert and we filled the role of providing local news.
It was a win-win situation as the news site gave journalism students at Miami University the experience they needed to take reporter positions after graduation. The OO was produced by two classes at that time – one wrote the stories, the other edited and posted the stories.
For a few years now, the department combined the two tasks into one class, first taught as a capstone and later as multi-media journalism.
But two factors have led to the decision by Miami’s journalism program to discontinue the class.
The first is that Oxford is no longer a news desert after the start of the Oxford Free Press last summer. As the newspaper is run by a professional staff, the OFP does not stop for semester breaks and it has done an admirable job covering the community.
The second factor is the number of professors in the journalism program. We’ve lost people from retirements and resignations and we must focus on teaching the classes that are requirements in our major. It has become increasingly difficult to fill the class with our majors as well.
So this is it.
I want to thank the editors that preceded me: David Wells, Sarah Siff and Steve Siff. I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention Richard Campbell, the Media, Journalism & Film chair who helped us start this publication. All of the support of our MJF chairs and the administration of Miami played a huge part in our success.
I want to thank all the students this semester and in the past who wrote stories, took pictures, shot videos and helped cover the community in such a wonderful way.
I want to thank all the people who gave our students interviews and information so they could write these stories. We appreciate your cooperation.
I want to thank you, our readers, for supporting us. We were happy to serve you well over the last eight years.
Here are some of the statistics from our website the last few years:
Best read story — Filming is underway for Sylvester Stallone film, ‘Alarum’ in Oxford in February of 2024
Also in the top 10:
