The Loras College student newspaper, The Lorian, was not placed in campus buildings Thursday morning.

The student newspaper, instead, was placed online.

Thursday was the first time this school year the Lorian was published only online at www.myduhawk.com. The first online-only edition was published in April. This year, The Lorian and LCTV-13 joined forces this year to create a new Web site.

"We were kind of behind the curve getting online," said Ashley Slota, a

junior who is the co-executive editor at the newspaper.

Slota said the decision to publish some Lorian editions online was made late last school year because of growing budget concerns.

"Like with everyone in this economy, we ran into budget cuts," she said.

Sue Czeshinski, director of communications at Loras, said the decision to publish online editions was a combination of budget concerns, sustainability efforts and a desire by college officials to be better stewards of its resources.

"It is an effort to be budget-conscious, no doubt about it," she said. "It's just really more an effort to be responsible any way we can to maximize our budget."

Lorian's printing costs increased last year, Slota said, and staff wages jumped because the minimum wage has been raised twice since 2007, yet the newspaper's budget has not increased.

Three editions will not be published at all this year in an attempt to save money on the payroll. Four editions will be published for free online-only.

While online-only newspapers have some benefits, including reader comments, there are many people who prefer a newspaper in their hands. A survey after the first online-only edition was published last year showed about 95 percent of the people wanted their newspaper printed on paper and not published solely online.

"I just like being able to hold a paper in my hands instead of reading a computer screen," Slota said.

Although four editions will be online-only this school year, all other editions will be printed the traditional way and six will be larger special editions.

"Hopefully we can keep printing as long as possible," Slota said. "As of right now, we're looking better than last year."