It’s 2 a.m. on Thursday morning, and most of Whitman’s students are asleep or holed up in the library chugging out a paper. But in a corner office on the second floor of Reid Campus Center, the editors and managers of The Pioneer are finishing boxes of pizza and arguing over headlines. Production Manager Ted Hendershot is telling News Editors Shelly Le and Karah Kemmerly that their front page photo caption doesn’t make sense. Managing Editor Cara Lowry is catching oxford commas. Web Editor Sara Rasmussen is g-chatting with Webmaster Kirk Crosland about a last-minute glitch on the website. Chief Copy Editor Jean Marie Dreyer is giving articles a final read-through and trying to tune out the Ke$ha song that senior reporter Rachel Alexander and Web Content Editor Josh Goodman are playing on high volume.

It’s production night as usual.

There are nearly 80 students who work for The Pio. Some of these people rarely step foot in the office––some of them aren’t even on the same continent––but a dedicated few of us spend a great deal of our lives in the newsroom. We’re the editors. You might not know us, but we probably know your name, class year, and major/club/sport (if applicable).

When eight Pio staffers attended the Associate Collegiate Press convention in Orlando, Fla. last semester, we realized the importance of editorial voice to a newspaper. Cara Lowry and I had the idea to start an Editors’ Blog as a way to communicate the editorial personality of The Pioneer to our readers. The editors and managers will write about the projects that we’re working on, the snacks that fuel our production nights and the moments of frustration and pride that we encounter on a weekly basis as we put together the newspaper.

The Pioneer has a lot of uses (I personally am quite excited to see our pages covering up windows as fraternity initiation season starts up), but in one sense, we are a record and a reflection of Whitman College. The Editors’ Blog is a record of The Pioneer itself in its efforts to capture Whitman.