For the last 20-some odd years, we’ve grown up with the evolution of technology in our back pockets. It’s something we’ve carried with us from the launch of the very first iPhone all the way to the newest model. It’s something we’ve always known.

We’ve had endless access to the internet, the news, social media and each other — things we often take for granted every single day. Or at least I know I have. We’ve gotten too caught up in it, a pacifier for so many, including myself, and it’s a habit we need to break.

We have the power of the world at the tip of our fingers, and we don’t even realize it anymore. We can meet and fall in love with someone in an entirely different country, Google any boundless thought or even make or break someone’s career. Yet, what matters is what we do with it. 

I choose to use it for good. I choose to show people the real me, posting fun and goofy pictures of me and my friends, showing off the memories I’ll remember forever, and you can too. Except I also tell the entire internet everything I know through writing — journalism, if you will.

Yet in all of this, I still catch myself and many others looking down instead of up nowadays (a quote I’ve picked up and now say to many of my friends). They often don’t understand because they’re stuck in the same trance I was, always looking down at their phone and missing what’s right in front of them.

We miss out seeing so many beautiful people and sights because we look at pictures of them on social media instead of witnessing it firsthand. So rather than dreaming of what other people are seeing, it’s time to put our phones down and enjoy what’s in front of us, one being a beautiful thing called a newspaper.

Newspapers are dying and newsrooms are becoming vacant, but a journalist’s passion to keep the profession alive has never been hotter. While we’re being pushed down left and right, belittled on social media, we’re also learning what it means to rise through the fire.

We’ve learned to grow alongside technology instead of fighting it. Adapting to our readers while still giving them the information they need to read and hear, voicing ours and other people’s opinions to create a new safety for our beliefs. 

And that’s exactly what we’ve done with the Kentucky Kernel.

We have already begun our efforts in improving our social media presence, as well as the addition of a broadcasting and podcasting team. So if you choose to keep looking down, at least be looking down at what we’re sharing daily on all of our social media accounts or on our good ol’ fashioned website.

Now, for those like me who want to put their phone down and look at what’s right in front of them, we’ll still continue to have our print publication, although with a twist — Special Sections.

These will be coming to you filled with all sorts of stories about campus life, sports, breaking news, and everything and anything in between. Although it saddens me to say we have ended our weekly print publication, all good things must come to an end, and this is our opportunity for a new beginning.

Right now in your hand, you have become a part of that. So, welcome in, get cozy and embark with us on our new journey. We thank you for being a part of the change, for being a loyal or new reader to the Kernel, an informed citizen and part of the flame that keeps print journalism alive.