Bonus Coverage, new blog site for online ACU Today
Two issues of ACU Today magazine can now be viewed on Issuu – including the first Bonus Coverage available only to online readers. The Summer 2009 issue is now joined by the Fall 2009 issue, which is a 76-pager, thanks to 24 pages of Bonus Coverage related to the cover story about the university’s Study Abroad program.
With its “page-turning technology,” Issuu provides a features-rich way to view what is essentially a 3D-looking PDF of the magazine. Each online issue is searchable and has live hot links to any URL appearing in the print edition.
Issuu versions of the magazine should make a huge difference in our international alums’ ability to keep up with news of their alma mater. Otherwise, alums living abroad would expect to wait weeks or months for their issue of the magazine to arrive.
We will soon be adding other back issues of ACU Today to Issuu, where other high-quality university publications can be found, such as the 2009 Mobile-Learning Report and the new-style Football Recruiting Guide (previously the Football Media Guide).
We also are using WordPress to create a new blog for ACU Today. The design complements the new design of the magazine, and will be soon supplemented with older content from the magazine’s original blog. Associate editor Katie Noah Gibson and I will be the primary authors, but I am hoping to add content from some of the magazine’s professional freelance writing staff, each of whom is an ACU alum. We are blessed with some great writers and I hope this can be a forum for some of them to contribute even more often.
We’ll be adding some additional features and widgets to the blog this week. Our aim is to make this a between-print-issues, regular stopping place for alums to learn more about ACU news and people than we might otherwise be able to share with them via other Web sites or in the 48 pages of the print version.