Dear readers,
Since I took over as editor in chief in late April, and through the summer break, I have been working with my staff to plan The Eagle's direction for the coming academic year. While you may have already noticed some of our new features, I want to summarize what I hope our newspaper can accomplish this year.
First - As always, The Eagle will strive to improve our coverage of both the AU community's interests, as well as the events and issues that affect all of us. While I believe we have made great strides in this regard since I began working for this newspaper as a freshman in the fall of 2005, I also believe that all media have a perpetual need to improve upon what they have already done. My personal mantra as a reporter has always been to present readers with the most accurate and up-to-date information possible, and this will be a shared value of The Eagle's entire team.
Second - The Eagle will expand its online content well beyond a traditional Web version of our print edition. This expansion will include the debut of a set of four new blogs and our expanded use of multimedia in our presentation to readers. Our debut of our new blogs has already begun, as I hope you have already seen.
Tony Romm, our special projects editor, volunteered to create a new politics blog, "politics@theEAGLE," to coincide with the 2008 presidential election. Their first major coverage commenced at the beginning of this week, at the start of the Democratic National Convention. Bloggers, some of whom will be writing from the sites of each convention, will be discussing their personal experiences and opinions about what happens at both the DNC and the Republican National Convention next week.
Jordan Coughenour, a columnist for The Scene, will be blogging about students' technology-related issues on "Campus Click."
Tony Owusu, a senior in the School of Communication, will blog about sports on "From the Sidelines."
Finally, we will debut "Eyes on The Eagle," a blog in which I and other editors will give candid and honest answers to our readers' questions and concerns regarding our publication. All of our answers will be in response to user-generated questions. So if you have a question or concern about our policies, send it to editor@theeagleonline.com and we will answer it as soon as we can.
Third - The Eagle will implement new programs to improve our accountability to our readers. The entire journalism industry has grappled with issues regarding its accountability to readers in recent years, and The Eagle is no different.
I do not believe The Eagle's staff has ever deliberately attempted to hide their practices and policies from their readers. At the same time, I recognize a significant number of readers likely do not feel that they have enough access to us. With that belief in mind, I have decided to take three courses of action.
First, as I have already mentioned, I have decided to begin "Eyes on The Eagle," a blog where I and other editors will respond to your questions and concerns directly.
The Eagle will hold an open session during its editorial board meeting once every two weeks. Members of the community will be able to come into our meeting room and discuss issues and questions with editors.
We will also include an e-mail address that readers can contact regarding a particular story at the end of every article and column. When the writer of the article is an editor or a beat reporter, the e-mail address will be the writer's own. Otherwise, the e-mail will go to the head editor of the section the article or column appeared in. From there, the editor will forward the e-mail on to the writer.
While The Eagle is editorially independent of AU and receives all of its funding from advertising, it is nonetheless your newspaper. We are here to provide you with information and to give you a forum to express your opinions. In the end, it is up to you to let us know how we can improve.
The entire staff of The Eagle looks forward to the year ahead; I hope you do as well.
Jimm Phillips
