What to expect from The Daily Tar Heel this year

I have the most unfortunate name in journalism.

Thank my unfortunate name and my unfortunately punny editors for Paige Views — the blog where Paige, the editor-in-chief of The Daily Tar Heel, tells you her views on things.

Here is where I’ll explain decisions we made — why did we choose that photo, why did we decide to write a story, why did we take a stand on a certain issue. I’ll ask for feedback from the community (Note: I’m always asking for feedback. Not just from the online commenters who’ve been on our site for so long they’re like family.) and I’ll tell readers about things they don’t get to see just by checking out dailytarheel.com or picking up a paper.

A little about me: I’m coming off of two years as the online editor, and I study graphic design in the journalism school as well as political science. I like digital things. I like social media. And I like to be present in the digital world. Sometimes, if I have any free time, I’ll pick up a great book and spend some time reading it. (And if I have even more free time, I’ll write a review for DTH Medium, our arts and entertainment blog, where they tend to make even more puns on my name.)

But above all, I love The Daily Tar Heel. I want to make it a better place — for readers, for staffers and for college media in general.

Here’s what to expect this year:

1. The Daily Tar Heel is focusing more on digital production and reader engagement than ever before.

What is a student newspaper if students aren’t reading it? This year, we’re emphasizing your needs as readers far above anything else. You’ll see that in the stories we highlight on the front page, in the storytelling techniques we’ll use to keep you informed and in our digital initiatives.

If a reader isn’t engaged in a story, then we made a mistake somewhere along the line of production. We’ll be asking for regular reader feedback in polls and adding timelines, interactive graphs, charts and quizzes to stories online to allow readers to see how the news affects them.

The reader comes first, and we will fight to remember that.

2. Get the news to readers when they want it, where they want it

More and more people are signing up for newsletters like The New York Times Daily Briefing or TheSkimm — including students like us. So, we decided to launch DTH At A Glance — the hand-curated dose of UNC news you can receive in your inbox Monday through Friday. For sports fans, we’ll send a sports-centric newsletter twice a week. And to stay up to date on breaking news in the community, we’ll send email alerts to you as well.

Our community manager will work hard to compile the best of that day’s news in At A Glance from all of our main coverage areas —we want you to have everything you need to know about UNC before you start your day.

Sign up at bit.ly/dthsubscribe.

3. Engage regularly with readers through community forums

Some of our best work at The Daily Tar Heel comes from collaborating as a group and brainstorming ideas. We’re opening our collaboration up —join us on the last Friday of every month for a community forum at The Daily Tar Heel offices at 151 E. Rosemary St.

The topic on the table will change every month, but we want to hear about the issues we didn’t cover, the stories you loved and the questions you have for us.

Our first forum will be Aug. 28 here at the DTH. We want to meet you, whether you’re a member of the community, a student, the leader of an organization, a business owner — anyone. Come get to know me, our editorial board and our editors and find out what we’re all about this year.