I would like to take an opportunity this week to re-emphasize a point that I have made in this column before-and that anyone who knows anything at all about the direction the news industry has been taking will undoubtedly echo: The Internet has altered, changed, re-formed and modified, expanded, increased, enlarged and multiplied the audiences served by newspapers throughout the world. It is now possible for anyone with a computer and a phone line to read thousands-even hundreds of thousands-of newspapers that just 10 years ago were inaccessible (or at the very least inaccessible in a timely manner) to anyone living outside the immediate community the newspapers served. I can sit in my living room today (i.e. March 17) and read the St. Patrick's Day edition of the Irish Times, a Dublin-based newspaper that my immigrant grandmother used to receive in the Bronx about two-and-a-half weeks out of date. I can hop on www.spiegel.de and learn that officials in the German city of Bad Doberan are chagrined by the discovery that their town, which will be hosting the G8 Summit later this year, still lists Adolph Hitler as one of its honorary citizens.

I can register for free online access to the New York area sectarian newspaper, The Jewish Week, and read all about the negative reaction to President Jimmy Carter's recent visit that some prominent Brandeis donors apparently had, and about the international controversy sparked by University president Jehuda Reinharz's remarks at a faculty meeting last month, where exactly two reporters-both of them student journalists for the Justice-were in the audience.

I cannot say it strongly enough, people: The Internet has made college newspapers a force to be reckoned with. Until faculty, administrators and students alike recognize this fact, misunderstandings like the one that prompted Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes to encourage donors to "reconsider" their support of Brandeis will continue. The Justice is more than simply a "college newspaper." It is a publication that is read by thousands of interested people who are unaffiliated with the University-some of whom actually report for news organizations such as The Boston Globe and U.S. News and World Report, both of which drew upon the Justice's coverage when reporting on President Carter's visit and its aftermath.

It is imperative today, more so than ever before, that students writing for the Justice get it right whenever they publish anything in their newspaper. The articles posted on the paper's Web site are not like the two-page essays that the students in my writing intensive course on American religious history can turn in and then re-write if they don't like their grades. When the Justice makes mistakes, the ramifications can be severe.

By that same token, faculty and administrators must, must, must understand that when they speak to students who write for the Justice-or when they speak to an audience that includes students who write for the Justice-they are speaking to reporters who have readers well beyond the borders of Brandeis University. I mentioned this point in my very first ombudsman piece, which I wrote for the Justice back in September, and I was reminded of its relevance two months later when I got together with some friends in New York over the winter break, and one of them mentioned to me that he'd read the column. I certainly had no expectation that the piece would be read by anyone outside Waltham, and I admit I was a little surprised to learn that my friend had even found the Justice's Web site, let alone bothered to discover that I occasionally publish my thoughts there.

His revelation confirmed my point, though: Thanks to the Internet, the Justice has a reach far beyond anything I and my peers writing for the Ram at Fordham University in the mid-1990s ever could have hoped for. It has a reach far beyond anything the Brandeis students writing for the Justice at that same time ever could have hoped for, and the sooner faculty and administrators recognize this fact-and start interacting with student reporters in the same way they would the larger press corps to which these students increasingly belong-the better.

The ombudsman serves as the readers' representative, writing a regular column evaluating the newspaper's journalistic performance. Prof. Maura Farrelly (AMST), the director of the journalism program and a former broadcast reporter for Voice of America, can be reached at farrelly@brandeis.edu.