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The Daily Tar Heel

Yackety Yack uses new methods to promote print publication

The University’s yearbook isn’t intimidated by social media.

In fact, Yackety Yack is harnessing social media’s power to advertise, the yearbook’s leaders said.

Despite uncertain sales numbers, those involved with the yearbook said they are working online to promote the print publication.

Facebook and Twitter have become avenues for the publication to rally the student body around its annual release, members said.

For example, the staff has uploaded some photographs to Facebook moments after taking them to promote their work, said editor Waverly Lynch.

Yearbook supporters said the keepsake’s value lies in its permanent documentation of a year.

Ben Leyden, the yearbook’s photo editor, said books are an appropriate way to archive because people will look through books years later, whereas the future of social media is still uncertain.

“Books will still be in my shelf,” he said.

The sales of the Yackety Yack are still covering its costs, Lynch said in an email.

Sales numbers from past years are unavailable due to rotating editors and a change in office space, she said.

“It is hard to say how the Yack is selling today as opposed to 10 (or even three) years ago,” Lynch said in an email.

Associate journalism professor and yearbook advisor Andy Bechtel said the yearbook staff is rethinking past methods and working to make the Yack a relevant publication.

In this way, the staff is bringing a creative and compelling yearbook to students, he said.

Lynch said students should purchase a copy because it is a keepsake, it has been central to tradition for more than 100 years and it was created by their classmates.

Leyden said there are no plans to alter the format of the yearbook in the future.

Schools are still producing yearbooks as their preferred form of documentation, Leyden said.

Contact the University Editor at university@dailytarheel.com.

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