From the Newsroom: Looking Back, Thinking Forward

About a year ago, then-Editor in Chief Bailey Heaps wrote a lengthy letter in this space in which he made a series of promises to our readership for the 2008-2009 year: He promised more in-depth reporting, an improved Web presence, more accountability to readers and more meaningful communication with the university community.

Did The Hoya keep those promises? Some of them, yes. Our commitment to being an online news presence certainly improved, and our four editorial departments produced a great deal of content that we can be proud of — investigative pieces that brought the failings of university agencies to the surface, features that put new student-artists in the spotlight, editorials that challenged the conventional wisdom and sparked campus-wide debate, and so on.

There seems little doubt, though, that we failed to make good on our promise to build a relationship with the community defined by trust, intimacy and communication. For first-year students who weren’t on campus last April, The Hoya’s most recent April Fools’ Day joke issue ignited a firestorm of criticism after some of its content was deemed offensive, especially to members of minority groups. Early April saw a sit-in protest take place in The Hoya’s office in the Leavey Center, as well as a tense town-hall meeting days later between Hoya staffers and frustrated readers.

As you can read in this issue, the affair culminated in the Media Board’s decision in late April to halt the administration’s negotiations for the financial independence of The Hoya from the university, a goal that our organization’s leaders have been pursuing intermittently for about 20 years.

And so, this week, The Hoya returns for another term, eager to make the most of the year ahead. We return with a slate of ongoing reforms designed to ensure that our coverage is fair and our organization is inclusive: Hijab Shah, a former sports editor, has taken the new position of staff development assistant for institutional diversity; I am currently speaking with candidates to serve as The Hoya’s first ombudsman, a reader’s representative position designed to field grievances; our Board of Directors is nearly ready to create The Hoya’s first Board of Advisers; and in the weeks and months ahead, we will commission a third-party review of our operations and coverage, arrange diversity training for all staff members, make available revenues from our April Fools’ issue for a pertinent campus event and host a readership forum open to the entire university community.

Our efforts to better serve and better communicate with our readers are not limited to internal organizational changes. We also return with two new Web sites (a main site returning at www.thehoya.com and a site for The Guide, our weekly lifestyle and entertainment magazine, to be located at http://guide.thehoya.com), a second edition of our New Student Guide for incoming students and, as usual, our dependable twice-weekly print edition. This is what The Hoya is offering its readers as the year begins.

But as I did in a letter after my election to this position in mid-April, I must again ask something of you. If we want to become an independent organization in the spring of 2010 (which we strongly do) we cannot do it without sustained communication with our readers — those who read us regularly, those who have supported and worked with us, and especially those who have felt betrayed by mistakes we have made in the past two years.

I urge you: Write a letter to the editor. Post a comment on our Web site or Facebook page. Follow us on Twitter. E-mail me at editor@thehoya.com or, even better, visit me in person at our office in Leavey 421. Whether you are a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior, attend our upcoming open houses and training sessions, which will be advertised in these pages. This year, we’re going to make a concerted effort to encourage you, our community and readership, to take part in the next age of The Hoya — I hope you do.

Kevin Barber (COL ’11)

Editor in Chief

Aug. 28, 2009

To send a letter to the editor on a recent campus issue or Hoya story or a viewpoint on any topic, contact opinion@thehoya.com. Letters should not exceed 300 words, and viewpoints should be between 600 to 800 words.