Before anything else, thank you for picking up this issue, and more so, thank you for stopping to read the letter. I know that even doing something small, like pausing to read the paper or look at our photos and designs, is a decision to expend limited time and energy.
Over the last 30 papers that I’ve worked on, that question has always been at the forefront of my mind: What will people gain from reading this? After I became editor-in-chief, an additional question became important: what will my staff gain from working on this?
In balancing the desires of students and staff members, there are hundreds of stories we’ve considered that didn’t make it past planning because we couldn’t justify them taking up limited page space.
However, even though being this discerning can sometimes feel exhausting, when we find something that strikes a balance, it can feel like striking gold.
That’s why we’ve gravitated towards creating packages, large sections of the paper themed around one idea or topic, with most of our issues. A package unites our staff. Of course, we’re always united in making the paper, but creating a package means so much more.
To create one cohesive work, designers get to collaborate across spreads to keep to one theme, photographers get to be creative and take more editorial shots and reporters get to dig deep on one topic or explore many different angles because they have the page space.
For my last paper as editor-in-chief, I knew there needed to be a package. Choosing the topic of that issue was easy: the FIFA World Cup.
The FIFA World Cup is one of very few events where people everywhere are all paying attention all at the same time. The FIFA World Cup is able to bring the world together at a scale that feels difficult to comprehend, and yet, this year, it’s happening outside of what feels like Free State’s backyard.
The ability to cover an event like this, as what feels like firsthand witnesses, was an opportunity I knew we couldn’t take for granted. Especially knowing this would be one of the last times many of us would work on a paper together, I wanted that sense of connection, both within our staff and across the world, to shape this issue.
So when you flip through this paper, I hope you feel part of something larger than just Free State — a glimpse of the same global connection that inspired this package and brought many of us on staff together for the last time.
