How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Every change made at WSN requires an explanation - we owe it to you, our readers.
In this issue, you've probably noticed some of our more obvious changes, like the redesign. My explanation for that is simple and shallow: It looks better.
But more subtly, we've also reorganized our content and added new departments, so we can serve you better with a more informative and enjoyable newspaper. Let me introduce and explain these changes.
-- Monday through Thursday on page 2, we will have the On The Side section. Each day, On The Side will run summaries of wire stories of interest to NYU students. That might include New York politics, happenings at other universities or even celebrity gossip. In this space, On The Side will feature one of four rotating weekly staples: a comic, a photo from around campus, a short feature or an editor's column.
-- We've also reorganized our food content and magazine-style features. They will be produced by our new Etcetera department, which will publish an Etcetera page on Tuesdays and a food page on Thursdays.
-- Our Friday paper will now be entirely entertainment and other arts content, to help you plan your weekend. You'll still find music, theater and film reviews there, but also keep an eye out for book reviews and video game coverage.
-- Our new multimedia department will leverege the power of the web in two new exciting ways. First, it'll create interactive online features, to supplement and support our print reporting. And - perhaps more excitingly - it'll also begin airing broadcast journalism online, offering both original features created by WSN and a new venue for NYU's broadcast journalism students to see their work aired. If you're interested in getting involved, e-mail media@nyunews.com.
-- And lastly, we've revamped our news desk. We've doubled the size of our news editing staff, and which is now split into three subsections - campus, university and city/state - letting us cover NYU in greater depth while also increasing our coverage of the city.
This isn't just a reorganization of content. By creating new departments for specific styles of journalism, our goal is to create new venues for NYU's students to thrive. WSN is first and foremost a teaching newspaper. These changes not only improve our newspaper and serve our readers, but they also provide new opportunities for our student journalists we weren't able to provide in the past.
But we also had you - the reader - in mind. With these changes, we will be better organized and more consistent. You'll know what to expect from us each day, and we hope you'll like the mix.
As always, I welcome questions, ideas and criticisms. E-mail me at editor@nyunews.com or call me at 212.998.4302.
Alvin Chang is editor-in-chief.
