A note from the 135th managing board

Today’s issue of The Daily Princetonian marks the beginning of the 135th Managing Board’s tenure, and a renewed emphasis on improving both our online and print operations. Over the next year, we will strain to push the newspaper and its dedicated staff to the forefront of collegiate reporting.

This means comprehensively covering each event that makes this University and town the places we choose to call home, but it also means taking long, in-depth looks at the problems and misperceptions that plague our community. It means constantly looking to bolster our web presence (follow us on Twitter, @Princetonian!) and to improve our print layout and homepage. Already, we are taking large steps in the right direction. This semester, you will witness the birth of the ‘Prince’ investigative unit, dedicated to examining complex systems and abuses of power on and around campus. During finals period, we relaunched our two blogs — The Prox and Intersections — and a third, sports-themed blog is in the works. Over Intersession, the Sports section inaugurated its own fast-paced Twitter account (@PrinceSports).

Thus, there is no doubt that this is a promising time for this paper. Despite our nature as an independent publication, we are lucky to be able to use the most valuable resources the University could offer: its students, faculty and alumni. As a result, some of the largest challenges facing the newspaper business at the moment do not fully apply to us: we have a very specific, intelligent and informed readership to go along with a highly motivated, energetic and equally intelligent volunteer staff. We do not face any direct competition, and we operate on a campus full of residents who are clearly not afraid to have their voices heard. In these regards, we are in an ideal position to spur progress.

But some of these resources can also make us feel too comfortable, and can hinder our development if we do not take advantage of them properly — an outcome we must regularly combat within the newsroom. We must never be afraid to ask the extra question of our sources, to take the extra five minutes to be sure our quotes are correct or to write a bold and wide-ranging column. We must be able to learn from the comments left on our stories and to encourage people from all walks of campus life to join the staff.

Indeed, this paper cannot truly be considered ‘Princeton’s student newspaper’ until we reestablish a norm of regular input from the students. So please do not hesitate to let us know what you think of our work, and if you have thoughts on how we could be doing better, tell us. If you think your opinion should be heard, or you could write that story more poignantly or you could find a better angle on that picture, join us.

As editors who write versions of this column unfailingly note, many of our promises and pleas recur in this piece year after year. We always promise to get better (as we should) and we always ask for your input (which we occasionally get). But this year more than ever before, we don’t have much of a choice but to make these changes. The reporting world is experiencing fundamental shifts, and every day we strive to be sure that we are not left behind. Our status as a campus publication does not excuse us from being subject to the conditions of real-world journalism. This makes working for a newspaper at the moment truly exciting, particularly as the paper has a proud 134-year tradition supporting its steps into the future.

Given all of this flux, we are presented with the opportunity to make this year one of the most forward-thinking the ‘Prince’ has seen. To that end, you will see more regular videos on our website, more news analysis on our pages and a greater reflection of the industry’s increasing reliance on the Internet.

So here is my promise to the Princeton community, on behalf of the editors of the 135th Managing Board: Whether it is a lecture coverage or an in-depth series, a back page photo or a video feature, a bi-weekly column or a blog post, we will aim to make our work as strong as it can possibly be, and to look to the future of journalism with as much energy as we can conceivably muster. We fully intend to take advantage of the opportunity presented to us by the changing world of reporting, and to let the ‘Prince’ become the best newspaper it can be.

Gabriel Debenedetti is a Politics major from Princeton, N.J. He is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Princetonian and can be reached at gdebened@princeton.edu.