After a year of development, The Maroon is launching an app to make Loyola coverage available on handheld Android and Apple devices.

Maroon advisor Michael Giusti said the intention of the app is to expand the Maroon’s mediums of coverage.

“The app is just one more tool to let us do what we are already doing but get it to the widest possible audience,” Giusti said.

According to Giusti, while the new app shares the same philosophy as the old one, to deliver campus news, the app curated resources that the Loyola community could use on a day-to-day basis.

Editor- in-Chief Rose Wagner said that one of these resources is access to campus news about COVID-19, as well as local information.

“The opening page of the app is COVID-19, pandemic news,” Wagner said. “There are also links for statewide resources when it comes to COVID-19. So there’s a whole section dedicated to links to the mayor’s website as well as the governor’s website for COVID-19 news.”

Giusti and Wagner shared the sentiment that the app’s push notification abilities are beneficial for immediate accessibility to news.

“Push notifications mean that we can get information out to not only Loyola students, but parents, and alumni and community members the second that Loyola makes changes, because we know that there are a lot of groundbreaking and pivotal decisions that are going to be happening in the next few months,” Wagner said.

According to Wagner, the app is a part of The Maroon’s transition to emphasizing digital publication and daily news.

“Being away from campus, having to cease printing or a physical paper, has definitely made a lot of us, especially me, rethink the way that we view our coverage,” Wagner said. “It’s kind of made us recognize that we need to be thinking in a 24/7 cycle, not a weekly print cycle.”

Beyond providing students with another medium to view campus news, Wagner hopes The Maroon’s consistency in coverage will provide a sense of comfort to readers.

“This is a time when there is not much certainty, but we want to try and give people as many answers as we can,” Wagner said. “I’m excited about having an app that not only promotes our staff’s work and lets more people see it, but also reminds us as a staff that we are a lifeline for communication.”

Download the app from the Apple app store here. Download the app from the Google Play Store here.