Welcome to another semester, and I’m sure everyone is in pretty good shape as far as adjusting to the campus. As you get settled in, The Gramblinite is already hard at work.Unlike in the previous years where many of the former staff members stayed, this year, there is nearly a complete upheaval of staff. It makes our job tougher, but we love challenges.
As this year progresses, you will see The Gramblinite progress into a better newspaper and media outlet for the communities of Grambling. However, we cannot do this alone.
In order to achieve our goal, we need the readers to send us news stories, events, and so on to us. Don’t worry. This doesn’t mean we won’t be looking for stories, but this will help us become more well-rounded.
One thing I noticed is that hardly anyone goes online to TheGramblinite.com. At first I was puzzled, but then I realized that everything in the paper is pretty much online. The online offers nothing new.
In order to change that, we will be producing blogs, videos, photo galleries/slideshows, and more. We believe all of this will help provide a better media and online experience for our readers.
Also, it’s the return of He Said/She Said. For those of you who do not know, He Said/She Said is an advice column that answers questions from students. For those of you with questions, feel free to send them to gnitehesaidshesaid@yahoo.com. The questions will have their own section online for you to peruse.
While the online content will be updated, so will the online layout. The layout will take some time to be developed, as it has to be designed and approved by multiple parties, but a new one is currently in the works. Once it’s released, it will be announced to the public.
Another addition to the online portion of TheGramblinite.com will be more photo galleries. Often, our photographers come back with tons of pictures, only for very few to be used. This will change, as we will start doing more slideshows online.
In the future, we will be posting news updates on the web. Even though our paper is a weekly, we want to make sure people get the news as quickly as possible. In order to do this, we will need to update the website nearly everyday with some piece of news.
This will be done in the blogging section, which is also at a new location. I know some people probably have the WordPress site bookmarked, but we will be moving the blogs back to TheGramblinite.com address. This will allow us to better capitalize on our goal to become the number one stop for Grambling news.
One thing this publication will not do is shy away from controversial subjects. We already have some invigorating stories lined up.
The controversial subjects or topics will be covered with the highest respect to reporting standards. We will try our best to offer an unbiased opinion on each topic in an effort to report nothing but the truth. This will not only be applied to controversial topics, but to all news stories.
Of course, I know this will ruffle some feathers, but we are not a public relations publication. Therefore, we will take into consideration everyone’s community service projects, meetings, and fluff stories, but they will be selected cautiously.
The purpose of The G-Nite is to serve the issues of the community. Most of the stories that we are asked to cover are not really serving the community, but a segment of a small population or percentage of the community. Due to this, we will be more on our toes as far as covering stories and issues well.
Another change that we are hoping to implement is more coverage of the Town of Grambling community news. While this is a university paper, we are the first option that most community members have at the news. Therefore, we will try to cover more city hall meetings and school events outside the university.
In order to succeed in our effort, we will need the help of the community and will need for stories and events to be e-mailed to us. Please send your events to gnitenewstips@yahoo.com. You can also send them to gsugnite@yahoo.com.
The Gramblinite is always looking for dedicated workers, so don’t be afraid to come to the office and offer assistance. We are located in Room 204 of Washington-Johnson Complex. Our meetings have been moved to 5:30 p.m. on Mondays, and we have a training session this Saturday at 1 p.m. in WJC.
We are not expecting all of the changes we are planning to make happen right away. There are some systems that have to be implemented in order for the changes to work properly. However, while it will take some time, we are working as fast as we can to enable our systems to effectively serve our readers.
As the semester turns a new page, we hope that everyone has a positive semester. We know that some will have trying semesters, but we plan to keep your head up to the stars and all that other fluffy stuff.
But as the new page turns, we hope you are turning the pages of The G-Nite.