As I approach my final semester as the Editor-in-Chief, I just wanted to thank those that have stuck around and appreciated the content we put out as journalists for the year I have been in charge.
I have to be honest, I didn’t expect the paper to take all the turns that it did. But, in some way, I am grateful because we had to get out of our comfort zone and still were able to deliver a finished print edition. The first two months as editor were some of the most fun I have had in any job. Each night I, along with a full staff, was staying after classes to assemble a new issue for the next morning with all sorts of content to cover. Being in that newsroom and sending the newest edition to print was incredibly rewarding for myself. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to finish college with that job.
Then spring break hit. The realization of having to adjust did make me worry, and I am usually not one to panic or overthink a situation. Thankfully, I didn’t and in the few moments I took to gather myself, I realized that we, as a paper, were heading into unnavigated waters.
At the time, speculation was saying that we would be back in school a week after break. Even after in-person classes were called off, replaced with the screens and cameras of Zoom, the hope was that we could return the following fall semester. Unfortunately, that was not the case and we ended up losing over 75 percent of our staff. We had gone from thriving to scraping by, and hard decisions had to be made. That fall semester was the toughest to deal with but, somehow, we still managed to pump out an issue once a week, which was all we could do with the staff we had.
We are in a new year and I have made it to my final semester in Memphis. I never faced real pressure until I was faced with a circumstance that was brand new to me, the writers, editors, and designers. We will finish this semester strong once again, and I am proud of the work we have done over the last year. If you had told us that we would be off-campus for an entire year and more, I would have found it hard to take you seriously. When I took the job back in December 2019, I knew my responsibilities were going to triple with classes and holding down another job. I had no idea that it would to the degree it has, but dealing with it made me more prepared for the unforeseen circumstances that will occur in the future.
This semester, we will continue to put out interactive content with students like we did last semester with the Walk & Talks and the personal profiles. We also expect to see an increase in sports coverage this semester, as we have more sports being played this spring than during normal years.
We are excited to continue serving this campus with interesting content about our campus, and we even hope that this would be the semester that we can get back in the newsroom and get back to the glory days. Eventually it will get back to the way it was, but until then we must persevere through the trials to get to the finish line. We hope you wait for us at the end as we continue to stride along.
