About Us
Dawgnet is a student-produced news Web site at Butler University. Dawgnet is an independent student organization that receives financial assistance from the Eugene S. Pulliam School of Journalism. The Web site is updated daily. While a majority of the updates occur during the fall and spring semesters, the site is to be updated when deemed necessary during academic breaks and during the summer terms.

History
Dawgnet first appeared in 1994 as a means to transmit original and Collegian content over the World Wide Web to users of the Mosaic browser. The full potential of instantaneous publishing was first realized after the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Dawgnet and the Collegian teamed up to deliver the latest news and reactions of Butler Students. Prior to this event, the Collegian distributed photocopied supplements of its print paper to report news such as the results of the 2000 presidential election.

The design of Dawgnet evolved, but was limited by how much content could be pasted into html files in a given week. Often, it took five staff members an entire evening to manually create an edition of about twenty stories. This lengthy process often excluded the participation of computer novices.

In January of 2002, the first issue of Dawgnet was published using a web application developed by Yaw Anokwa and Chris Hoffman. The application was written in the Cold Fusion web application language. Content was inserted into a SQL Server 2000 database. On demand, the static web pages were generated from Cold Fusion templates and database content. In the winter semester of 2003, Dawgnet grew its editorial staff in order to publish its own content.

Since then, editors working for the on-line news source have been recruiting writers and photographers in order to provide original content for the Web site. Material from the Collegian was still used, but rather than Dawgnet material supplementing Collegian content, Collegian articles and photos began to supplement Dawgnet material. Dawgnet began to report news that directly affected the lives of the members of the Butler community. Using the immediacy of the Internet, material could be published for the entire campus to read as soon as it happened. Dawgnet staff compiled news and information from the academic departments, residence halls, and the Greek houses. It also covered news events such as meetings, lectures, and sporting events.

Dawgnet continues to be used primarily as a means for providing students with a medium to train them in on-line journalism.

Policy
The primary purpose of Dawgnet is to provide an on-line news source to the Butler community and to the rest of the world. Dawgnet also embraces its role as a keeper of the history of Butler University. Dawgnet focuses on issues affecting the university's administration, faculty, staff, and particularly issues that affect students. The primary audience of Dawgnet is the students, faculty, and staff of the university. Secondary audiences include alumni, parents, community supporters, advertisers, and Indianapolis residents with an interest in Butler University. Tertiary audiences of Dawgnet are anyone else who happens to come across Dawgnet. News and information presented on Dawgnet must be designed with these audiences in-mind.

Dawgnet strives to accomplish the following objectives:

• Provide students with practical experiences in journalism and related fields while working in an atmosphere of free expression and with the high degree of individual responsibility.
• Provide a platform for computer science students to apply what they learn in their course work with a professional news Web site. Applications are to be continually updated and improved and new Internet innovations should be aggressively pursued.
• Provide news as a means of stimulating discussion and communication.
• Provide information about the accomplishments and contributions of members of the university community.
• Provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and commentaries through the publishing of editorials, columns and letters to the editor, written by members of the Butler community and others.
• Provide a means of delivering announcements and advertising material to the university community.