If you kept track of the Campus Times Facebook page last semester, you might not have noticed much. At all. Posts were infrequent, and our only active form of social media presence slowed to a trickle.
Finally, in December, we decided to restore a social media position and began to post nearly every piece of our work to the page. Our goal is to maintain this.
After all, we make our stories because they’re worth telling. So, it’s worth ensuring each story has an audience to tell it to.
Naturally some stories, especially controversial ones, will garner more attention, so we won’t always be equally present in the community. But we certainly intend to raise our baseline presence.
Along with posting more stories on Facebook, we’ll begin posting updates on topics ranging from new projects to staff opportunities. And we plan to create staff bios that let you know who actually works on CT. Complete with photos, of course.
Blurbs and videos detailing what we do on our Sunday production nights are also on the horizon — because for myself and many other staff, the appeal of CT goes beyond just crafting the content. The biggest draw for me has been interacting with other members and learning everyone’s quirks.
Considering how open we are to new contributors, it’s a shame our gatherings have tended to be so insular, usually including only editors and columnists. And contributing and even staff writers often end up meeting only their own section editors, if that.
To help remedy this, we aim to run events around campus, ranging from tabling to journalism workshops. And we’d like to get back on the merch train. More details are on the way in those departments.
Because the more CT grows both internally and externally, the more we can hone in on what matters at UR, since we’ll be more likely to hear about aspects of our community wanting change. Most of all, building a larger network of people connected to us in some way will have a ripple effect on our influence and ability to impact.
More students reading CT means more students aware of important developments. It means more students having their viewpoints challenged. It means more students learning about experiences — clubs, events, media — that could have a lot to offer for them.
The average student has probably heard of us, but our site analytics reveal how only a small sliver of those students read us even somewhat regularly. So if you start following us now, you’ll already be joining a somewhat exclusive club. I welcome you to put that on your resume.
The future of CT offers boundless possibilities. We intend to release more content like our video of the faculty senate sit-in that puts you right in the heart of a story. Our website should also see a much-deserved boost — look out for interactive infographics and other new features.
Then again, we could scrap it all and roll out GIF-only content. You’ll just have to stay tuned.
