Edits

This post might be old news for most, but the Chicago Maroon staff elected Supriya Sinhababu as our new editor-in-chief, and I couldn't be happier about it. Supriya is a strong writer and Voices section editor with a work ethic that can hopefully see the paper through another year.

But I'm not interested in singing any praises here—not when public opinion of the Maroon on campus ranges on a given day from apathetic to enraged. As the candidates eagerly pointed out in their speeches last Sunday, we have a lot to improve upon, and many chances to grow stronger in the next year:

*One of the strongest components of Supriya's platform was her call to expand the Maroon's web staff to the size of any other section (i.e. News; Viewpoints; etc), especially since budget issues may require us to relegate some articles to "Web Only" status to save paper.

*Matt Barnum presented a series of ideas for boosting traffic to the Maroon website by adding multimedia content. Though the logistics have yet to be hammered out, I would eagerly get behind any initiative to teach reporters to shoot videos and record podcasts of interviews and panel discussion. Of course, the success of this plan would rely upon collaboration with the entire Maroon Staff, not just the editors—whether they're goofing around or recording hard, engaging news content.

*Claire McNear asked the staff to focus on the Maroon's endowment in her speech, alluding to both the growing financial pressures on the paper and a University-wide push to tap into our alumni resources. And like Matt, she also wanted reporters to reach beyond their writerly roles, possibly by taking more photos and posting fliers to publicize the paper.

Left largely unanswered was the question of how to scale back the paper's production costs. Staffers on both sides of the podium suggested initiatives from banning homework-related printing to firing our current distributors and asking students to pass out the paper. I actually think this is a great idea—maybe this way I'll actually have a Friday paper in my hand before 5 p.m.

The Maroon certainly has a lot to sink its watchdog-teeth into here. But when the new year is over, it won't matter so much to me who was elected last week. Rather, I'll want to know that we didn't simply file away these fantastic ideas from our candidates (all current section editors) during the daily grind of college journalism. And here's news for you, team: it will take more than just Supriya, Matt, Claire, Mike, Sara, etc. to finish the story on the paper's web-content and finances.