Letter from the editor: Welcome to ‘The Universe’

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Every year BYU offers a promise of something new: new faces, new friends, new classes and an opportunity for new adventures. This year The Universe is not exempt from that trend.

BYU’s Communications Department announced in January that The Daily Universe would shift from producing a daily paper to a weekly paper, which has caused many people to think that we have disappeared altogether. But don’t worry, the Daily Universe has not abandoned its readers — we’ve just changed our name and the way we deliver you current events.

The newspaper is now called The Universe. No, we did not name the paper The Universe to boost our ego. Simply by removing the “daily” portion of “The Daily Universe,” we were able to maintain our identity while clarifying that we no longer publish a print edition daily, but instead we only publish a paper on Tuesdays. (Although, I will admit that it is pretty entertaining to tell people that I am “the editor of The Universe.”)

[media-credit name=”Steve Fidel” align=”alignright” width=”198″][/media-credit]
Rebecca Lane is the new editor of The Universe for fall.
Many have thought that this meant we would only be reporting once a week, but we are still a daily news outlet — we are now promoting our digital-first platform. “Digital-first” means that our focus is getting timely news online so that you can get your news faster. Plus, by having the paper online, we are able to provide you with more photos in slideshows.

We have a lot of exciting new  things planned for the upcoming school year. We still continue to use Facebook and Twitter. By following our page and our tweets, you can join in the discussion and be part of the news happening everyday. Your comments and tweets might even appear in the printed edition by using #BYU.

Something else we are excited about is the website’s makeover. Universe.byu.edu will be incorporating all of the broadcast news content from ElevenNEWS at Noon to add more video and additional dimensions to our news coverage, as well as in-depth stories about the on-goings around campus.

The Universe has apps for both the Android and Apple’s smart phone. Check out “BYU Digital Universe” in the Apple app store and TheDU.com for Android. Both are free. These apps provide a on-hand newspaper of The Universe’s stories, a calendar of events at BYU as well as in Provo and surrounding areas and current video footage from around campus.

Some things will remain the same. We will always be sure to have your sports coverage, campus events, calendar of activities and, of course, we would never stop publishing the Police Beat. The Universe staff of more than 60 reporters, editors, photographers, web developers and other support staff gives us a staff larger than many daily community newspapers.

Also, make sure you keep a lookout for our competitions. Our popular “Front Row Fanatics” will soon be joined by other ways to interact with The Universe you won’t want to miss out on.

Make sure that you pick up The Universe every Tuesday on campus to see some of your favorite articles from the week. We will resupply newsstands all week to make sure features and BYU-targeted advertising is always available. For daily news fixes, check universe.byu.edu to get up-to-date news.

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