The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

The student newspaper of Bucks County Community College

The Centurion

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Centurion gets makeover

Throughout the years, the newspaper at Bucks, the Centurion, has gone through many changes, from the staff to the length of each issue. More recently, as avid readers will notice, the paper’s layout has also recently changed as well.

Due to the paper’s long time printer company falling victim to the rather fragile economy, the Centurion staff figured it best to find a new company to press the paper: The winning company being the Bucks County Courier Times facility in Bristol Pike.

Journalism Professor Tony Rogers offered some background on switching printers:

“We had been using the same printer for as long as I’ve been here, rather 15 years. Rather abruptly, we found out they went out of business. So, I emailed Pat Walker, editor of the Bucks County Courier Times and she said ‘Hey, why don’t you use our printer?’ The working relationship we have [with the Courier Times] is great.”

As such, the paper is going to go from its original format of a tabloid format, 11 inches wide and 17 inches long, to the golden standard format for papers, known as the broadsheet, which will be 11.625 inches wide and 20 inches long.

Other notable papers, such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, carry this format as well.

Co-Editor in Chief of the Centurion Michael T. Berchem offered some background.

“It took about two weeks of planning with [fellow Co-Editor in Chief] Dan Perez, and I wanted to put some pizazz into the layout,” Berchem said. “What we were going for was a retro look, like the older Centurion, but at the same time, something new age as well.”

Certainly, the “new age” that Berchem was speaking of is echoed in papers like the Bucks County Courier Times.

Professor Rogers called this “a challenge, but exiting choice.”

“To me, the broadsheet has more of a prestige. An official newspaper look, if you will,” Rogers said. “It’ll give us more visibility around campus; people will see the paper and due to its larger size be more intrigued by it.”

“Hopefully, when people see this paper, they will notice how far it has come. With a bigger design, more people will pick it up and want to join our staff,” Berchem said.

Rogers also stated how this was strictly the “editor’s choice,” and was very impressed by the staff altogether.

“The staff has been putting in lots of hours, really making this new layout. This is strictly a student run newspaper, and they’ve been doing a great job.”

One thing the staff found out is that there will be a plethora of space in the broadsheet format compared to the Centurion’s old format.

To combat this, Rogers said that “While we’ve been doing 12 pages [in the tabloid format], we might try eight [in the new broadsheet style].”

While it might seem as if the paper will shrink in size, there is actually more potential for writers, and every Bucks student is encouraged to write for the Centurion.

Student stories should be emailed to [email protected] by noon every Wednesday.

Centurion Staff member Stephen Godwin Jr., 23, a journalism major from Warminster, said that he is “Looking forward to getting the paper up and running again. Mike Berchem did a majority of the work regarding the layout and I’m impressed. The front page looks great!”

“We’re really excited to see how this will turn out,” Rogers said.

The Centurion is curios to hear what you think about the new design. Send feedback to us via email or on our website at www.bucks-news.com.