You are not reading this in a print edition of The Daily Gamecock. Chances are you're not even reading it on a desktop. Nope, you're probably on a phone, laptop or tablet. You were probably brought here by a tweet or a Facebook post. That's the reality of media in 2018.
And as the editor-in-chief of your editorially-independent student newspaper, it's critical that I know that. That understanding is what makes me capable of this job. It's also what makes me capable of overseeing a big change to how we do our jobs.
The Daily Gamecock will not publish a weekly print edition during summer 2018 as we have during past summer semesters.
Instead, our content will be delivered to your inbox each Wednesday morning in a digital newsletter. These newsletters will deliver the best of our work, which we'll continue to produce regularly, just like our newsletters during the fall and spring semesters. This move allows us to best serve you by focusing our resources and efforts on the parts of our work that are on the rise.
This shift is representative of a lot of shifts in the world of media as a whole. It's what our advisers and my professors in the SJMC call becoming "digital first." That's a fancy industry way of saying that, because you like to get your news online instead of waiting for a print edition, we're going to bring you the news there first.
This isn't to say that our print edition is going away forever. We'll be back on newsstands this August with our "welcome back" special edition. Our print editions are a great tradition that have served as a historical record at the University of South Carolina for generations. That will not change. I won't let it.
A great deal of thought and planning went into these decisions. Our staff, a dedicated band of students who work day in and day out to keep you informed, spent hours discussing how to best evolve our practices. We debated among ourselves and sought the advice of advisers and former staffers. No factors were weighed lightly, and that's why I know that we've made the right call.
Change is nothing new at The Daily Gamecock. We're in our 110th year, and everyone here firmly believes we'll be around to serve campus for the next 110 and beyond. But in order to do that we have to adapt, just like generations of student journalists did before us.
These changes are just the start of another chapter in The Daily Gamecock's storied history. The way we do things isn't the way they've been done in the past, and it's not the way they'll be done in the future. That's a good thing.
What won't change, what won't ever change, is our dedication to keeping you informed.
We're excited to execute these changes and move our organization forward. And, without giving away too much, we're excited for even more exciting developments that we'll be announcing very soon. We look forward to your feedback, and maybe even a little patience, as we grow into this new era.
Here's to the start of another great semester, and many more to come,
Mary Ramsey, editor-in-chief