We see the kinks every day. And just in case we should miss any, a faithful legion of readers lets us know when we screw up.
From my desk in the newsroom, I have a beautiful view of the trash can and I’m lucky – I use it frequently to practice the arc on my shot. Red-ink-filled first drafts and poorly aligned columns make the 10-foot flight several times per day. I’m three for five on the night.
If you happened to catch our first issue this quarter, you might remember reading our editorial on the lack of diversity among Lantern columnists. Maybe it was the result of a little rookie frustration – this is, after all, my first quarter as an editor and maybe I had bigger expectations for how many people would want to take time out of their busy schedules to write for us. For free.
It was all in an attempt to make our paper better – despite spending a considerable amount of time trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to make our paper publishable, we still manage to find time to make positive advances – making our paper better. In the coming weeks and months, I hope readers will begin to notice such improvement on this page.
There are many things about the opinion section I really like. I like hearing from regular students who do not spend every waking second in the newsroom, or in an Undergraduate Student Government debate or in a university office. There are regular students out there who can write and who bring fresh, interesting spins to readers three times per week.
I like UWire columns. They are written by students from other schools and are published where readers usually find letters to the editor. We pull them off an Associated Press-like wire that connects student newspapers so we can get a cross-section of news from throughout the country. They show us the issues with which students from others schools grapple, and let us know we are not the only ones with crazy ideas and neo-conservative tendencies.
I like John Bonza’s cartoons. Someday he is going to graduate and The Lantern will be in trouble. He’s been here since we’ve been printing on paper.
As we try to make the section better, readers will begin seeing new layouts, more pictures and a different focus on the page. For the non-design-oriented people (like me), we can actually put things on a page in a way that makes you look at them first. I’ll believe it when I see it.
In the interest of preserving our copy editors’ eyesight, some arrangement of photos and images will replace all those boring words. Improved columns and editorials will hopefully evoke more reader responses, which will make us seriously deliberate before we run UWire columns to fill the space left behind by a lack of letters to the editor. Stylish photos will accompany columns, replacing the high school yearbook-like mugs we’re sporting now.
Having edited this column, I’m now six for eight this evening, which included a sloppy ill-advised 15-foot fadeaway.
While pardoning our dust, I hope that readers remain loyal with their feedback as we run new layouts and new ideas so I can toss some of those, including the old format we continue to use.
Tim Hoffine is a junior in journalism and the opinion editor of The Lantern. He can be reached at [email protected].
