If you look through this week’s Technique you may notice that we have overhauled our section headers. We hope you like the changes; we have tried to make them both more visually appealing and better organized. However, the most important feature of the new headers heralds a major new initiative for the ‘Nique: we now have section editors’ names and email addresses listed at the very top of the page.
Over the past years the Technique has grown increasingly isolated from the students whose voice we should represent. Oftentimes we have found ourselves hearing about important stories belatedly, through secondary sources like SGA or Communications and Marketing. The ‘Nique strives to be the premier source of on-campus news, and as such we find the current state of affairs in drastic need of improvement.
Putting the editors’ email addresses in the headers, then, is the first step for us to strengthen our connection with the student body. We hope that our readers use them to submit story ideas, comment on the content of our paper or simply share their feelings and opinions about what’s going on around campus.
This is only the first step in our effort to become more accessible to the student body, however. For those of our readers who are familiar with Twitter (www.twitter.com), the Technique now has an account. You can follow our updates at twitter.com/the_nique to be informed about what is going on around campus, and you can easily communicate with our staff using this new medium. In the future, we plan to integrate our Twitter updates into our website.
Furthermore, starting next week you can find ‘Nique staff on Skiles Walkway recording video for Buzz around Campus, asking students’ opinions on a variety of issues. These videos will be posted online together with the regular paper. Along with voicing their opinion on different questions, students will be able to give us feedback and discuss the newspaper with members of our staff.
Finally, we have created a new position to coordinate all of these activities. As the Outreach Editor, I am responsible for improving our on-campus visibility and accessibility. If you have any suggestions for how the newspaper can become more open and responsive to your concerns, you can contact me at [email protected].
I hope this initiative helps move the Technique back toward its rightful place: as the voice of the student body and the servant of its interests.