A few weeks ago, I sent out an editor’s note detailing that changes were on the way for this little paper that could, that will soon be celebrating its 90th birthday.
Those changes are occurring, and I am here to update you on how they are coming.
Firstly, one of the main things you will see once we print our first paper when returning from reading week is that we have merged Campus and Local news to create one main “news” section. This is for a number of reasons. The first, and arguably most important is so we can better focus on the news the Laurier community wants. Far too often we let stories fall by the wayside because we don’t have the resources to cover them. This way, instead of splitting our resources to find interesting stories for local and campus, we are able to cover whatever is interesting to you, our readers, in any demographic — local, campus, national, etc. If you want to know about it, our job is going to be to write about it without the stigma of a certain section.
The second update is not necessarily a change as opposed to a triumph. Over this reading week, I have continued to work feverishly to defeat the malware that scripted our website. While our first battle a month ago was a good start, we weren’t strong enough to defeat the terrible malware. But now our website has finally sped up and is accessible to students to use.
That said, we are looking to change the look of our website. With how much content we are producing, we want to exhibit a more newsy feel to our website. In the upcoming weeks, our theme will change to exhibit more content on the homepage and be more accessible than the current visual-heavy design.
Finally, there is a desire for papers to go more visual heavy on their front pages. On March 23, our second last paper of the year, we will be experimenting with a 30″ tabloid, no fold design for our paper. It’s what most student papers are moving toward as the struggle for pickup increases and we want to see which would be best for the Laurier community. Please, please express your thoughts so we can move forward in an effective manner.
These changes are necessary to make The Cord a competitive, effective and inspiring newspaper at Wilfrid Laurier University. But as always, we need you, our dear readers, to tell us what you like and don’t like. We may be turning 90, but we’re always changing.
