Old Medium, New Plan: Making a Newspaper for Students, by Students

Here at The Ledger, our position is unique. We aren’t beholden to profits and shareholders, we aren’t concerned with our popularity on social media and we don’t care if we receive clicks on our site. At The Ledger, our focus is one thing: the students.

Over the years, this paper has expanded exponentially. Starting out as a bi-weekly paper, The Ledger proved to the administration that a weekly paper was necessary for students. Thanks to hard work by Ledger and student affairs members, The Ledger now provides a weekly service to the campus.

This year, we are building off our predecessors’ success. In a world where news mediums have lost the ability to report objectively, our paper looks to center on the topics that matter the most, not the stories that garner the most social buzz.

As Editor-in-Chief, it is my responsibility to work closely with my colleagues to keep students informed on not only campus happenings but also community happenings. Our news staff has worked tirelessly to find the important stories on our campus and in the local cities and towns. Our arts and entertainment writers have been aggressively patrolling as well, looking for the newest trends and happenings. Our opinion writers have researched and questioned controversial topics to provide perspective on the points. Furthermore, our page designers, illustrators, managing editor and web and advertising managers have spent hours behind the scenes preparing this paper for an exceptional year.

We here at The Ledger want to put students first. More and more people have lost faith in the media, but we here at The Ledger want to tackle the stories that affect you, the student, the most. We don’t have numbers to reach, we don’t have quotas to fill and we don’t have financial obligations to meet. As a university newspaper, we have one requirement: deliver clear, accurate news stories.

We want to provide you with the most current and real-time information. Since we are a weekly newspaper, our social media sites will serve as a critical platform to provide you with the most current information as it comes in. You can follow us on Facebook at The Tacoma Ledger, or on Twitter @uwtledger. In addition to providing you with important news, we’d also like to hear from you. This year, we are introducing a Letters to the Editor section, which will allow students and faculty to share their thoughts in the public forum. We at The Ledger believe student voices should be heard, and we are here to provide a platform for those voices.