The Chronicle

Editorial

Today marks the beginning of what we here at The Columbia Chronicle hope will lead to a very successful future. After several meetings this past summer, we decided that the time had come for us to change the way we do things. And believe us, things have changed.

If you’ve been attending Columbia for more than a year or you’re a faculty member, you can easily figure out why changes had to be made. Over the last four months, the staff has been restructured. Both the newspaper and the web page have been redesigned and plans are in the works for a nine-week promotional campaign.

With this issue comes our commitment to you, our readers, to provide the best coverage we have to offer. Our new readers may be wondering why we chose to go in a different direction.

To be honest, The Chronicle has been a joke to many of the students and faculty members. While we have had our good moments, they were usually overshadowed by mistakes. One factor in our decision was an issue that came out late last semester. It was in no way one of our best issues and could be considered by some our worst.

Readership took its biggest hit in recent years by dropping more than half from the previous week. We received calls from readers asking why so many errors went unnoticed by staff editors. One caller, in particular, simply asked, “What happened?” A letter from the Writing Center said that the issue “merely served to embarrass the college.” That incident made us realize how the little mistakes we make can become bigger ones.

With a new team and a newfound commitment to working harder than we ever have before, you can expect to see improvements in the way The Chronicle covers Columbia and Chicago.

It has never truly been understood that we have to balance classes, jobs, social lives and the work we do here at The Chronicle on a weekly basis. We care about what we do and will continue to work to make this newspaper what it should be.

Yes, we have made mistakes and will probably continue to do so, but that is part of the learning process. In order for us to become better at what we do, we must learn from what we have done in the past. We have always been an award-winning newspaper. Every time we come to work, we strive to become better. Our goal is to be Columbia’s choice for campus news, viewpoints, arts & entertainment, sports and much more. That’s our job and that is what we plan to do.