Viewpoint: The New universe

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You are now holding the first weekly edition of The Universe.

During the spring and summer terms, we’ll be making the transition to a weekly print edition and focusing daily on a digital first news platform with multiple updates to the web and mobile media throughout the day.

The transition is an adjustment to say the least, but it provides us — and you the reader — with a wealth of opportunities. With the transition we can also change other aspects of the paper and website to create a better resource for students.

During the spring and summer terms, we’ll be testing these changes be to see what works and what doesn’t and create a final, polished version for the fall semester. How will we determine what works and what doesn’t? From comments from our lovely readers. Congratulations, you’re our guinea pigs.

As such, we need you to give us as much feedback as possible. We need you to be as involved as possible.

Around campus, I’ve often heard students complain about the paper, saying it’s a members only club, that only students in the Brimhall Building can participate, etc. I’m hear to happily reject that view. We want student input. We want student involvement — especially from students outside of the Department of Communications.

On the Issues & Ideas page, we want to encourage more student involvement both online and in the weekly print edition. We are hoping to have a topic of discussion for each week’s page. This topic will be announced the week before (see info box below for next week’s topic). The following week, we will publish responses and columns submitted by students. These topics should be relevant to you. If their is a campus, local, national or international topic you feel needs to be discussed, let us know.

In addition to the themed section, we’ll have the regular readers forum, filled with other musings from students. A few small reminders about letters: Please, remember what your mother taught you and be polite. It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. When in doubt, remember not to write anything that you wouldn’t be say in person.

Remember, authors’ names will forever be attached to their letters. In the past, students have written letters in which they exaggerated their views in hopes of being published, only to later regret it when the letter is published. In general, use common sense.

For the paper and website in general, as we test ideas, we want your feedback, both positive and negative. If you like a new layout, let us know. If you think a new section is horrible, we want to know that too. If you have ideas of what you want to see or how you think we can improve, we definitely want to hear.

The Universe is a student-lab newspaper, and we want to keep it that way. We want it to be a resource for students across campus. We have our ideas of how to do that, but we are only a small segment of the BYU population. We can only create a more complete view if you participate.

You can email us at , find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @DailyUniverse. You can also contact me personally at or on Twitter @Harmerk.

Next week’s Sound Off:

Recently, student loan debt in the U.S. surpassed credit card debt as it topped $1 trillion. Soaring tuition prices have prompted questions about a tuition bubble. What is the value of a college education? Are tuition rates too high? Are student loans worth it? Send us your thoughts at .

 

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