It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Well, for our newsroom at least.
Soon, we’ll be hiring a new set of newsroom leaders and planning for the coming year. This Friday, The Post Publishing Board will gather to hear presentations from candidates who have applied to be the next editor-in-chief of The Post.
Whoever gets the position has a lot to look forward to. They get to write this incredibly pretentious column every week for no particular reason. They’ll receive lots of angry emails and the occasional suspicious package mailed by local residents who want their conspiracy theories published. They’ll make printing mistakes and will have to come back to the newsroom in a 3 a.m. stupor to re-send the paper to the press.
But at the end of the day, they’ll realize just how cool it is to work with 100 or so of your closest friends. They’ll gain valuable insight into the university and the region that will challenge their perspective and make them think deeply about what the community cares about. They’ll make plenty of mistakes along the way and learn a few humbling lessons about leadership.
The curse of working for a college newspaper is that our leadership staff turns over every single year. That means that while the next few months will be hectic, it’s also and exciting time to be in our newsroom. Seniors will be packing up their desks and moving out, while underclassmen make big plans for the coming year.
The new editor’s focus may shift the way we do things. Maybe these changes will be tangible to readers. Maybe things will look the same on the surface. I can’t make that call right now. However, I have faith not only in the ability but in the visions of our candidates.
In other exciting news, you’ll soon see a brand new name on our masthead: Andrea Lewis, our incoming student media sales internship manager. With her decades of experience in marketing, event planning and project management, Andrea is exceptionally well-prepared to take the helm of our business operations. And after about a year or so without a “real adult” running our business side, we’re thrilled to welcome Andrea to our team next week.
Although we’ll have a new editor-in-chief very soon, I’m not bowing out just yet, and I have no intention of lame-ducking my way to the end of the school year. We still have plenty of plans in store for the rest of Spring Semester.
If you have ideas for how we can finish out this year strong, it’s not too late to send them my way. We’d love to hear from you, and we appreciate your patience as we prepare for the future.
Lauren Fisher is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University and the editor-in-chief of The Post. Are you ready for someone else to write this column? Let Lauren know by emailing her at lf966614@ohio.edu or tweet her @lauren_ _fisher.
