The Hornet news publication finally hit two goals that have been in the works for the past few years.
To celebrate and reintroduce itself to the campus, The Hornet held an app launch party in conjunction with an open house on Wednesday.
The event in the quad kicked off with Monster Energy handing out free drinks, Zombie Doughnuts Bakery selling customs pastries and the Angels Strike Force girls holding games to win rally monkey dolls.
The Hornet Spirit Team later joined the soiree holding down The Hornet’s booth with a Pin-the-Stinger-on-Buzzy game and a Buzzy photo booth where one could get his or her photo as the school’s mascot.
According to Jay Seidel, the journalism advisor at FC, the launch party in the quad doubled the amount of downloads for the new FC Hornet app in one day.
Seidel said that before the event, the FC Hornet app had about 100 downloads and after the launch it had 208 downloads.
The FC Hornet app contains features beyond just news stories, as well as photos and multimedia. It has an integrated map of on campus locations, ATMs and even nearby restaurants in Downtown Fullerton.
Fullerton College is the first two-year college in California to move to mobile journalism platforms, which is the growing trend in today’s digital world.
“If we just did a news app then hardly anyone would download it, but we made it something useful, kind of like a Swiss Army knife,” Seidel said. “Instead of a news app, it’s a Fullerton College app that has news.”
But that wasn’t all that was happening on campus.
The school’s real life mascot, Buzzy, spent the day walking around campus, giving high fives to students and faculty, dancing in the building hallways and barging into classes to blow kisses.
Many students were shocked to know that FC actually has a mascot suit and seemed to respond favorably to him.
The new and official Hornet newsroom now located in Room 708 took on a more formal mood to welcome faculty, students and alumni.
Fullerton College Interim-President Greg Schulz and the North Orange County Community College District Interim-Chancellor Fred Williams both stopped by to meet with The Hornet staff and see the culmination of three years work.
The newsroom has moved this semester to the newer 700 Building after holding its previous home for 61 years in the 500 Building.
When asked about the process, Seidel looked to the ceiling and chuckled.
“The move to the new newsroom has been in the works off and on for a long time. But the real move has been in the works for about three years,” Seidel said.
The newsroom now has more computers, a podcasting table, a media room for news casting and enough storage to house almost all of the Hornet’s technical equipment.
The new newsroom doesn’t have similar private offices like the old, but Seidel said it’s now more like a professional newsroom.
The Hornet’s Editor-in-Chief Jayna Gavieres said she enjoyed the professionalism of the room in 708 saying that it was nice to have all the staff writers in the same room.
But when asked if she wished for the old editor-in-chief office of the former newsroom, it seemed as though the thought hadn’t crossed her mind and she laughed.
“I do! I wish that I had an office, but this is also a good learning experience,” Gavieres said. “It just shows me that I can’t hide from anything when I’m here.”
