Serving readers top priority

Column by Taylor Soule

While I remember and lament my first email address (a then-hip fusion of X’s and O’s circa ninth grade), I remember and marvel at the password: “editorinchief.” Even amid the era of cryptic email identities, I had the same dream I live seven years later at The Times-Delphic.

Though the boisterous jumble of The Times-Delphic newsroom hardly resembles the dim corners inhabited by the editors-in-chief of my ninth-grade imagination, it’s an editorial oasis. As I pause to reflect on the last seven years, I trade “editorinchief” for new dreams that transcend the dusky desks of my ninth-grade perspective.

Seven years later, those new dreams envelop Drake University, Des Moines and the increasingly labyrinthine realm of Internet media under one purpose: providing the information necessary for the Drake community to govern itself. Albeit a serious responsibility, I’m eager to serve the readers with that purpose guiding every word I write, edit and print.

It’s difficult to define what constitutes ‘necessary information,’ but I have several definable, tangible goals that spring from it. The first is to provide the means for readers to hold the staff and I accountable. With that goal in mind, I pledge to write an editorial at least once a month revealing what we’re working on in the TD newsroom and thinking about in the wider world of journalism.

Transparent journalism requires collaboration, however, which led the staff to create a blog dedicated to the trials and triumphs of navigating the world of media as student editors. Visit The Times-Delphic Editors’ Blog at www.timesdelphic.wordpress.com for a candid, personal glimpse into the day-to-day experiences and dilemmas of fledgling journalists.

As The Times-Delphic staff and I enter a new year rife in new media, plans, challenges and stories, I remember the ninth-grader with the now-shameful email address. I remember her password. I remember her vision to edit at the musty desks of her naive imagination. I remember her dream to impact others through journalism and help readers govern themselves.

While my TD desk is neither musty nor in a dim corner, that dream remains the same. I’m grateful and excited to serve the Drake community, and I hope you, the readers, are excited, too.

Soule is a junior news-internet and writing double major and can be reached at tdeditorinchief@gmail.com