I went back to school on Feb. 12…sort of.

Several of our Ogden Newspapers editors from the region were invited to visit the campus of West Virginia University that day for a tour of the university’s Media Innovation Center, meet with faculty, observe part of a class, and then take a trip over to the offices of the Daily Athenaeum and WWVU-FM, also known as U92 The Moose.

Having attended what is now known as West Liberty University for my under-graduate education, I never had the “big college” experience. That was OK for me. It still is. It was a smaller campus, with fewer buildings, which meant less opportunity to get lost trying to find your classes. Smaller class sizes led to better communication and conversation with fellow students and teachers.

To me, the idea of having to get in a car or rely on mass transit to travel between classes just wasn’t appealing.

It works well for others, though, and that’s good.

This recent trip helped to reinforce not only the differences between smaller colleges and big universities, but also served as a reminder of how much time has passed since my own college days. I completed my undergrad in 2001. Some days that doesn’t seem like so long ago, but then I’m reminded I have colleagues who recently finished their own college years and there is a large enough age difference that they could be my children.

Technology is the biggest tell, though.

In my college days, our student newspaper, “The Trumpet,” still used film photography, shot in black and white, and then pasted printed clippings of our articles onto sheets of paper to then be sent off-campus and printed.

The radio station’s most advanced technology was a set of CD players. The television station used cameras and other equipment which had to be at least 20 years old. Remember, I was there in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

Investments have been made in the years since. The newspaper was gifted digital cameras and updated computer software soon after I graduated, the radio station went digital around the same time, and the TV station now has a setup at least twice the size of the studio we used.

At WVU today, they have podcasting labs, the newspaper is printed and online, students are able to access their class information with computers small enough to fit in a satchel (or in their pockets), radio broadcasts can be done on location. One class is experimenting with artificial intelligence for use in journalism (which is both intriguing and frightening), and they are in the process of setting up a virtual/augmented reality studio.

A lot of that is done at West Liberty (and campuses across the nation) these days, too, of course, which shows even more the passage of time.

It can all be mind-boggling to take in as we look at all these advancements. The thing to remember is that these are all tools which can assist us in our jobs. Journalism, whatever the platform, is still about gathering and delivering information to our audiences.

The use of the internet to do research for news articles was still in its relative infancy when I was in school. Many of us were still relying on landline telephones, and taking notes with a pen and paper (something I still do). Those were the tools of the trade back then, just as using smartphones to take pictures, video and audio recordings, and even stream live from a scene onto social media are tools for journalists today.

There is always going to be something new coming along. The important thing is to remember the core elements of this business.

••••••

I posted about the visit on a couple of my social media pages, and received a comment from a friend and former co-worker, Summer Wallace-Minger.

You may remember Summer mentioning her kids throughout her years of writing columns in this newspaper. Well, they’re both grown, and pursuing their respective educational opportunities in Morgantown.

Had the day’s schedule not been so tight, and had I not had to be back in Weirton for a city council workshop that night, I absolutely would have loved to have seen them. It’s been far too long.

(Howell, a resident of Colliers, is managing editor of The Weirton Daily Times, and can be contacted at chowell@weirtondailytimes.com or followed on Twitter/X @CHowellWDT)