There’s something that I need to say. It’s taken me a while, but thankfully now I can get it off of my chest. I can speak for the whole Campus Times in saying this?
Thank you.
It’s not very often that we are able to say this; we don’t have many opportunities to.
My thank you is not only directed at our writers who toil each week to take a topic and make it exciting. Nor is it just for our photographers and other contributors, but rather it is specifically directed to all of our readers.
Here’s to you. Without you, we wouldn’t exist.
This semester, we have already introduced the Campus Times Blog on our Web site, http://www.campustimes.org. This has provided another outlet for students at UR. University alumni are also encouraged to contribute, which provides them an accessible voice to reach the student body. Hopefully, interest in the blog will flourish. With any luck, this venture will grow into a Web site that is updated with new submissions on a daily basis. Success in this realm might also lead us into new mediums for connecting with our audience, such as podcasting.
We recently released a readership survey in the April 3 print edition of the Campus Times. The main objective of the survey was to gather as much feedback as possible from you, our faithful readers. Besides receiving comments about the content of the newspaper, we were also able to provide useful demographics to our advertisers – without their support, we also would not exist. The response from the survey was extremely helpful and we will not let it go to waste. We will start to improve in those areas that you consider most problematic and hopefully have many improvements in place by our first issue in the fall.
Not only will we work to increase the quality of our articles and diversify content, but there are other goals that have come out of this project. An example is trying to target the best possible locations to distribute the paper. While we may put plenty in a well-trafficked place such as the Carlson Library, few of them are picked up. This is wasteful and shouldn’t be accepted by the community. We will work to redistribute these in the 40 locations to which we currently deliver as well as add new places. We will work to put more copies in lounges and similar places that students already go to.
Feedback is an essential part of the editorial process that may be lost too often. We value your opinion and it drives us to work harder. It is difficult for us to do better if we don’t know where we are lacking. Thanks to your input, we now have a sense for this. If you have further feedback that can be useful to us, please feel free to contact me at publisher@campustimes.org or Ben Wrobel, our Editor-in-Chief, at editor@campustimes.org.
Creating a newspaper is a two-way street. We are a service: the Campus Times exists for your enjoyment and can only exist with your contributions and readership. We look forward to fostering our relationship with our readers and furthering the quality of the Campus Times, our community’s newspaper.
Wasserman is a member ofthe class of 2010.
