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  • Published
  • By Sheppard Senators staff
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  As the Air Force continues to take advantage of technology to become leaner and more efficient, the Sheppard Senator and other newspapers around the globe will begin to do the same thing. 

A directive from Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs is pushing field offices to move toward an online-only product, enabling news to become instantaneous while allowing personnel the opportunity to view local news wherever they might be. 

"We're very excited about this change," said Maj. Mike Young, director of public affairs for Sheppard. "With our new Web-based news service, we'll be able to focus on timely news articles, while still reaching our target audience." 

The major said the Dec. 15 issue will be the last the newspaper staff lays out and designs. 

The newspaper publisher, the Times Record News, will continue to publish a base newspaper by retrieving stories from Sheppard's new public Web site that launches today, as well as other military Web sites. The new Web site is www.sheppard.af.mil. 

"Giving up the Sheppard Senator as we know it is a big change for us," Major Young said, "but we have a great relationship with our publisher and we're confident he'll continue to support us, helping to keep our readers informed." 

The cultural change won't affect only those who put the paper together. It will also affect those who read it. 

Instead of waiting until Friday to get the latest news, readers across the world can find out what's going on at Sheppard everyday. 

"This is truly an opportunity to become a daily news product and better meet the needs of our readers," said John Ingle, editor of the base newspaper. "The only thing that is changing is how we get information to the public. We will still write stories about Sheppard and post photos of Sheppard people." 

The base newspaper staff has worked on the new public site for over a month, loading stories and photos through the Air Force Public Information Management System, a Web-based system that allows news divisions to easily upload items to their respective Web sites. About eight months of archived material will be available as soon as the public Web site goes live. 

The Air Force announced the change in how bases will deliver news Nov. 7 on its Web site, www.af.mil. The move to a Web-only product meets several goals of public affairs, said the Air Force's top public affairs officer. 

"A Web-based information-delivery system provides a number of benefits," said Col. Michelle Johnson, director of Air Force Public Affairs. Among them: posting news releases in real time; providing access to home-station news from deployed locations; and using the same delivery system at home and while deployed, the colonel said.
 
A reduction of 200 positions in the 800-strong public affairs career field drives the change, but news will actually get to Air Force people faster under the new policy.
Public Affairs staffers and other news producers will instantly post stories, photographs and artwork to their unit's public Web site rather than waiting for a weekly publication to hit the streets. 

"With the new Web management system, we can post content to Air Force Web sites within eight minutes," said Chief Master Sgt. Janice Conner, the Air Force Public Affairs enlisted career field manager. "This decreases the time between when an article is complete and when it's released from three to 10 days to within minutes." 

The new way is mirroring what civilian news media are already doing, the major said. More people are turning to the Internet for their news. 

Fewer Air Force people are picking up their base newspaper each week; surveys have shown the number of people who read every issue fell from 57 percent in 1994 to 38 percent in 2004. 

The policy was developed by a working group using Air Force Smart Operations 21 principles. The group was chartered by Air Force Public Affairs to determine the best way to deliver Air Force news in view of personnel reductions. 

The group determined that each Air Force newspaper cost around 40 man-hours per week in page design and approval, making newspaper production a target for work savings. Eliminating the weekly product would allow a news staff to devote time to producing more and better news coverage, the group concluded. 

"The beauty of base-level online news is the timeliness and worldwide accessibility of information," Chief Conner said. "Combine the ability to merge the multimedia capabilities of photographs, streaming video, audio news and features, plus graphics and links to other Air Force features, and we have a true multimedia experience all in one source - the wing commander's No. 1 internal-information tool."