Emma Ockerman was chosen in February to lead The Post during the upcoming academic year.
Last spring Emma Ockerman became the first junior and first woman in more than a few years to be editor-in-chief of The Post.
Now she’s poised to become the first editor in recent memory to serve for two full years. In late February, members of The Post Publishing Board voted to select Emma Ockerman as the news outlet’s editor-in-chief for the 2016-17 academic year.
Speaking in The Post newsroom Sunday, Ockerman said she’s looking forward to personally following through on the plans she’s spearheaded to make The Post a web-first outlet that will produce a one-day-a-week tabloid starting at the beginning of Fall Semester.
“We’re trying to shift some of our writing focus toward more enterprise long form content for the print product. which will come out each week on Thursdays in tabloid format,” she said. “For the website, we’re going to be focusing on quick-hit breaking news content and more blog articles, which performed exceedingly well this academic year.”
In addition to already serving as The Post’s editor-in-chief this academic year, Ockerman has interned with The Columbus Dispatch, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit Metro Times. She’ll report at TIME in New York City this summer.
Hans Meyer, chair of The Post Publishing Board and an OU associate professor of journalism, said Ockerman’s professional experience at The Post and elsewhere offers a “real advantage” for the student news outlet going forward.
“We’ve always been really impressed by Emma,” Meyer said. “She’s been a great leader for The Post in an uncertain time.”
That uncertainty stems from the current digital transition, which Meyer said Ockerman has been “laying the groundwork” for since last spring. Ockerman said her staffers have been experimenting with content more than they had during her first two years on campus.
“I believe that we did think outside of the box a lot this year,” she said. “I think we shifted our focuses more digitally than we had in the past and we were thinking not about how The Post has been for the last 100 years, but how we should be.”
Ockerman said she’s eager for the chance to work through the next year of the transition, and Meyer said he’s pleased to have her on board.
“We felt that she really is the right person to see this through,” he said.
Meyer isn’t the only one who thinks that. Jim Ryan, editor of The Post during the 2014-15 academic year, said Ockerman has been “part of the core group of Posties who has shaped the publication’s future.”
“Having someone to guide The Post through the crucial planning year heading into that change, and into the first year of implementing it, I think, will be helpful,” Ryan said, who is currently a reporter at The Oregonian.
There will be more experimentation and innovation coming from The Post next year, Ockerman said, which was a big reason for her wanting the job for another year.
“I think that we are not tied to the title and to the history,” she said. “We’re being more innovative. We are having more fun with it.”
@SamuelHHoward
sh335311@ohio.edu
