Hi there, Badgers! I’m Scott Girard, and I will be the 2012-’13 editor in chief of your 120-year-old student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal.
Less than one month ago, our staff had the honor of meeting over 250 Cardinal alumni at our 120th anniversary celebration. It was a great reminder of the successes former Cardinalistas have achieved in the world of journalism and beyond. But it was a greater reminder of how much pride those who have worked at the Cardinal still take in the paper, traveling from all over the country to meet up with old friends and give advice to current staff members.
Some of those former staffers covered JFK’s assassination, and others were around for the declaration of war on Japan in 1941. We are reminded daily of our newspaper’s coverage of those events with old newspapers hung up around the office, and we do our best to be ready for the next major event.
However, the sixth-oldest student newspaper in the country must also adapt to the changing world of journalism. There is a growing importance placed on immediacy, through Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets. I will work to make sure our staff knows how to best use these resources to provide the student body with important, immediate news, while ensuring we do not sacrifice accuracy in our reporting.
An ongoing problem for our paper has been a lack of diversity in the office. This not only harms our product, because we miss stories and perspectives this campus needs to know about, but also as staff because we do not get to share in those same perspectives. I hope to reach out to campus groups dedicated to improving diversity to discuss how we can improve the climate in our office to make it welcoming for everyone.
Finally, we couldn’t put out a newspaper five days a week without you, the readers, picking it up. So please give us feedback as we work to give you the most important news happening around the campus, city and state. We will face exciting challenges over the next year covering a presidential election, a search for a new chancellor, another successful Badger football season and much more, and I hope you will follow along in our paper or through our website.
If you have an interest in sports, music, movies, photography, writing, science, business, news, politics or just want to meet a ton of awesome people, we have a place for you in our office and would love for you to join us. Be ready for our recruitment meeting in the fall, or just stop by 2142 Vilas Hall. Until then, have a great summer!
If you have any interest in working for The Daily Cardinal under Scott Girard’s leadership, email opinion@dailycardinal.com.
