How Articles Are Organized on rutartan.com

Updated

rutartan.com is the website of The Tartan, Radford University's student newspaper. Articles are organized by section and date: each entry shows a headline, an author byline, and a section label, and the homepage lists stories in reverse chronological order, with the newest items at the top. If you want to find a specific type of story — sports, arts, campus events, or national news — browsing by section is the fastest route; if you know roughly when something ran, scanning by date works better.

What each article entry shows

Every item in the feed follows the same pattern:

  • Section label — the category the story belongs to, such as Local News, Arts, Environmental News, or National News.
  • Date — the publication date, repeated for each story.
  • Headline — the article title, usually with a short deck or subtitle.
  • Byline — the author's name, often with "By" or "For" to indicate staff writers versus contributors.
  • Excerpt — the opening lines of the story, followed by a "Read More" link.

For example, a sports story appears as: "Women's Soccer: Highlanders Turn Toward Big South Play After ETSU Draw," by Andrew Marchetti, under Local News, dated September 18, 2026.

Sections you'll find

The paper covers both campus and broader news. Sections visible on the site include:

Section Example coverage
Local News Women's soccer, alumni book releases, community events
Arts Student photography exhibits
Environmental News The annual "Fall Into the New" event at Bisset Park
National News Imposter syndrome awareness, NIL in college athletics, religion in schools, Artemis II, federal shutdown coverage

Sports stories are filed under Local News rather than a separate sports section, so if you're looking for athletics coverage, check there rather than expecting a dedicated tab.

How the ordering works

Stories are listed newest first. On the page reviewed here, the September 18, 2026 items sit above the April 14, 2026 items, which in turn sit above March 31, 2026. Multiple stories can share the same date — four separate articles are dated September 18, 2026 — so the date alone won't isolate a single piece. Use the headline and byline together to distinguish them.

Finding a specific article

  1. Decide whether you know the section or the approximate date.
  2. If you know the section, scan the section labels down the feed until you reach the relevant category.
  3. If you know the date, scan the date stamps; note that several stories may share one date.
  4. Match on the headline, then confirm with the byline if two stories look similar.
  5. Follow "Read More" to open the full article.

Common snags

  • No standalone sports section. Athletics coverage sits inside Local News, so a section-only search can miss it.
  • Repeated dates. A single publication day can carry several unrelated stories, so date filtering alone is imprecise.
  • Mixed recency. The feed reviewed here jumps from September 2026 back to April 2026 and then March 2026, so older national pieces can appear directly beneath much newer campus news.

If you're trying to locate one particular story, the headline is the most reliable anchor; section and date narrow the field but rarely identify a single item on their own.