The journalism department received an upgrade in software this week after going more than a decade with the same software.  The Roar’s Editor in Chief Alexa Carlos Tamez have been eagerly awaiting this upgrade.

“[W]e found out we got the newest versions of them, we got the 2018 versions of them,” Carlos Tamez said. “So, we’re really excited to use them because, like, we don’t think we’re going to have any more problems.”

Carlos Tamez also said the products used by the department have been the same since she started journalism.

“Well, basically, for the past few years that I’ve been here we’ve been using all really old ones,” she said. “They’ve been from, I think it was 2002.”

Student media adviser Mark Schledorn says the reason for this is Adobe’s expensive payment system.

“Adobe went to a new way of doing things where you have to pay a monthly seat license,” Schledorn said. “So it was about $20 a month per computer, that’s 20 computers, $20 a month, there’s no way we could afford that.”

Schledorn also said the software the yearbook and newspaper staff have been using is from 13 years ago.

“We’ve been working with InDesign CS4,” he said, “which is from 2004, so it’s ancient.”

Schledorn also said  problems with this old software started last year, when the journalism department purchased new computers.

“I had some computers that I had an operating system from five upgrades ago, so it would run my old software,” he said. “When we got the new computers last year, things started getting really glitchy, running that old software.”

But the journalism department recently stumbled on a way to upgrade its software.

“We got a special deal from the county where we buy it for $500 a year, kind of like a lease, I guess,” Schledorn said. “But that gives us access not only to InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, but also all of the Creative Cloud which includes some video editing, Adobe Premiere software, Adobe Lightroom, lots of cool stuff that we didn’t have access to before.”

For Carlos Tamez, this is a great new addition.

“I’m really excited to use them and see how much better our product turns out,” she said. “It’s going to make the process of putting the pages in and working on InDesign a lot easier.”

By Ben Nielsen