Welcome, northstarnews.org readers! As your reading this article clearly demonstrates, you are aware that North Star has made the transition from a purely paper publication, to a fully functional online website. However, before this transition was made, many of my classmates and peers expressed to me their concerns regarding the “death” of the print version of our newspaper. I am here today to put those concerns to rest.

Concern #1 from North Star fans:

“There’s just something about holding a North Star in my hands… I don’t want to give that up.”

First of all, no there isn’t. I love North Star newspapers; I’m the co-editor in chief. But let’s be real—the tabloid newspapers are awkwardly large, inconvenient to hide while reading in math class and not the proper dimensions to make a perfect newspaper hat or oversized paper airplane.

And if you still disagree, I’m sorry, but we paid just as much attention to your sentimental attachment as Steve Jobs did to the people who told him “there’s just something about pressing actual buttons to make a cell phone call” or as Mark Zuckerberg did to people who told him “there’s just something about only connecting with my friends in real life” or as Thomas Edison did to people who told him “there’s just something about sitting in the dark all the time with no way to identify my surroundings past dusk.” Progress has no sentiment.

Concern #2 from North Star fans:

“No one’s going to read it once it goes online.”

To be honest I need not even address this concern, since your reading this very sentence inherently disproves it, but I’m a basketball player who likes her arguments to be off-the-back-board-alley-oop-slam-dunks, not wide open lay-ups, so I will continue. Are you really telling me that when your science class has a computer lab work day in which you’ve spent 39 minutes thoroughly checking your Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, and all you need is three more minutes of online entertainment to successfully avoid doing that  Moodle assignment on bacteria growth, you won’t check out the latest sports highlights or music feature on North Star online? Wait what? That’s already what you’re doing? Thought so.

You put in the effort to grab a North Star off the stands because you were interested in our opinion pieces, our news coverage and sports updates—I don’t think spending that extra .0005 seconds typing in a URL will be an especially arduous task.

Now, fellow readers, I apologize if my tone was overly harsh—I did not mean to weirdly scold you. I simply wanted to impress upon you that this online transition is one you should be excited about. As I alluded to earlier: North Star online is the future, much like iPhones, Facebook and light bulbs were. Imagine what life would be like without these imperative-for-survival items. You can’t right? Well, fellow readers, years from now you will feel the exact same way about northstarnews.org. My well-crafted arguments should have been enough to assure you of that.