University hall

 Sam Raudins, the editor-in-chief of The Lantern, welcomes students to the university and announces that The Lantern will not operate under its traditional print schedule this coming school year. Credit: Casey Cascaldo | Former Managing Editor for Multimedia

Dear Lantern readers,

Welcome back to campus! As our Buckeye community grapples with the many changes that come with day-to-day life in a pandemic, The Lantern is also facing changes. Industries have felt the financial strain of COVID-19, and the news world is included in that struggle.

In the spring after students, faculty and staff were sent home, The Lantern had to stop printing twice a week because no one was on campus to receive the paper, and we lost a fair amount of ad revenue because of it. As we head into an uncertain fall semester, we have decided out of an abundance of financial responsibility for our organization and for future Lantern staffs to continue without printing twice a week and only print our special editions — including this Back-to-School issue.

That’s not to say The Lantern will never return to printing twice a week; we hope this decision will bring us back to a place of stability to resume our familiar schedule in the future.

That’s also not to say the quality of our content will change. In fact, we are pushing ourselves to grow in a digital-first way that we may not have had the time or energy for in the past.

The Lantern will continue to fulfill its mission as the independent student voice of Ohio State and will continue to embrace change as we have since 1881. We wish you the best as you face your own kinds of adjustments in the first week of classes.

Best,
Sam Raudins
Editor-in-chief