Dear Readers,
This semester, even more than most, has been a time of transition for the Pio. We hired a predominantly new staff of reporters, columnists, photographers, illustrators, production and business associates and even a few new editors, while welcoming back our core returning staff members. We switched from tabloid style to broadside. Our Art Director, junior Rebecca Fish, redesigned the entire template for how the paper is printed. We have a weekly news radio show. For the Back to School issue, we launched a brand new version of our Web site (www.whitmanpioneer.com), designed to be more interactive and user-friendly by our Webmaster, senior Andrew Spittle, who also pioneered: no pun intended: our new online editing system.
Included in all of these transitions was my appointment as Editor-in-Chief and Kim Sommers’ as Publisher, a process that began during the summer and was officially recognized by ASWC on Sunday, Oct. 18. Kim, who became Editor-in-Chief with senior Jamie Soukup in Fall 2008, will continue to help guide the Pio in her current role while overseeing the burgeoning business side of the paper.
As Editor-in-Chief, I hope to do a lot of things in a relatively short period of time. Like most editors before me, I hope to expand and improve our coverage, but thanks in large part to their hard work I have the luxury of saying that we already have. For instance, we started the semester with an intent to focus more on community issues and the Whitman faculty, and I believe we’ve made significant inroads in pursuing both of those goals. The Opinions section has also incorporated more diverse perspectives on topics ranging from twitter to valley transit. But don’t think we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The Pio, like every college paper, has a constantly changing life cycle and finding the right approach is always a work in progress. There will always be production nights that seem like they never end, or literally don’t, and there will always be the occasional error in judgment: my biggest goal is for us to learn from our mistakes. That said, our staff this semester has been phenomenal; to date, not a single reporter has quit the staff, and to everyone who’s ever signed up for a campus club or activity, you know how incredible that is (knock on wood).
To sum up this midterm check-in, we’re in a pretty good place: but we need to get better. Help us do so by attending our weekly meetings, held upstairs in Reid every Sunday at 7:30 p.m., commenting on our Web site or submitting a letter to the editor to [email protected].
All my love,
Gillian
