Andy Thomason's platform

The Daily Tar Heel benefits from a culture of quick and detailed reporting, but needs to better address audience demand. To accomplish this, I will implement a series of new initiatives that will: institutionalize the pursuit of projects that can shine both in print and online; enhance the website’s ability to satisfy our audience’s evolving expectations; improve transparency of the newspaper to the community at large; and continue to emphasize The Daily Tar Heel’s teaching mission.

Enhance our role as public servant

The Daily Tar Heel is made up of the best student journalists in the country, and yet too often our potential is limited by having to turn around stories every day in order to fill the paper. The
newspaper is hurt by a lack of hard-hitting, records-based stories, and our readers suffer from it. I will take steps to make The Daily Tar Heel a better public servant, giving our readers the news they need to know.

Create of a deputy managing editor for enterprise
Desk editors are responsible for generating all content, a reality that stretches them too thin. I will create a new position — deputy managing editor for enterprise — that will help ensure effective long-term planning. The new position will be responsible for: meeting with each desk editor weekly, giving feedback on coverage, suggesting enterprise stories and public records to request, overseeing new projects and editing enterprise stories before they are printed. Essentially, this person will be responsible for keeping the editorial staff focused on producing content that benefits our readers most.

Visual managing editor will become deputy managing editor for visuals
The addition of a visual managing editor was an important and effective improvement to the newspaper. But the reality is that the position does not need to be a member of management to carry out its responsibilities. The position will be changed to deputy managing editor for visuals, but will retain its former responsibilities, with an emphasis on package planning and overall
coordination between news and visual desks. This person will take a leading role in package planning, enterprise and will be present at prebudget meetings each day to brainstorm visual ideas that will brighten up the next day’s paper.

More multimedia features
The Daily Tar Heel is too stagnant in the realm of multimedia. It is simply not enough anymore to just tell stories in text form. I will implement a new principle to help us move forward: For every major feature we run in print, there should be a multimedia feature posted online. To accomplish this, desk editors will be expected to submit multimedia requests on a weekly basis, and the topic will warrant more discussion in the newspaper’s enterprise meeting. This change will better satisfy our audience, which expects this sort of content on a regular basis.

Analysis-based video segments
The Daily Tar Heel covers timely issues better than any college newspaper in the country. The Laurence Lovette trial and tuition hikes stand out as two models from this year of how to follow an important story. But even more can be done to make sure our readers are as well-informed as we can make them. I will prioritize multimedia segments in which editors break down important stories, highlighting the basic issues for our readers’ benefit. I will also prioritize videos in which we invite sources to participate, answering the questions on our readers’ minds.

Evolve the website

Our website, dailytarheel.com, still lags behind the best examples of our peers. This was made apparent for me in viewing the most innovative websites at the annual National College Media Convention I attended in the fall. I will work with Detroit Softworks to explore ways to make the website more intuitive, flexible and aesthetically pleasing. In the meantime, I will make several changes that will encourage our readers to treat dailytarheel.com as a destination.

Links will become part of the newsroom workflow
Every online story worth its weight needs to link to other stories for background or more information. But currently, the only place links can be found on our website is on the blogs. I will implement a structure in which staff writers treat links the same way we check facts, by placing notes within the text of the story during the editing process. Staffers on the online desk will then include the links when posting stories. It is a quick fix that will make all the difference in the world to our readers, and will encourage them to explore the website rather than just read one article and leave.

Beef up topics pages
As pages devoted to explaining subjects that dominate our coverage, topics pages have the potential to be invaluable to our readers. But in the current structure, they are often ignored. I will remedy this by giving the deputy managing editor for enterprise oversight over the topics pages, with the expectation that desk editors will edit the most important topics for currency. The deputy managing editor for enterprise will be in charge of ensuring that the most timely and important topics are updated for popular access by readers.

Reinforce the blogs’ importance
Blogs are in many ways more valuable than news stories, especially to our student audience. I will ensure that they do not go neglected any longer. Following the example of this year’s Town
Talk blog from the City Desk, posts will be regular and enforced by the desk editor. But editors will be required to delegate the blog to a dedicated assistant editor or staff member, and that person will be held responsible by the online editor for regular posts.

Improve transparency

Perhaps the most nagging problem faced by The Daily Tar Heel is that it simply is not trusted by a large portion of its readership, particularly the student population. By increasing transparency
and publicizing the structure of the newspaper, I will work to remedy that problem.

Revive the editor’s blog
As editor-in-chief, I will author a blog at least once a week, illuminating how the editorial staff dealt with a certain issue or story. By better informing our readers of how we do our jobs, they
will come to trust and value us more, and it could serve to highlight our best projects. As the ultimate overseer of the opinion page, I will also be unafraid to author columns whenever I feel it is necessary to clarify policy and procedure.

Allow editors to comment on online stories
Current policy prohibits all staff from commenting on online stories. Often, readers use the comments section to express confusion as to how a story was reported. In cases like these,
editors will be permitted to comment on stories in explanatory fashion, detailing the reporting and editing and better informing readers of how we work.

Create a monthly multimedia segment and podcast for outreach
There is a general ignorance among our readers of how we report and edit articles, especially controversial ones. I will create a monthly multimedia segment that follows a story from beginning to end, detailing how a story is assigned, reported and edited. Making it possible for readers to see how an important story is handled will go far in increasing trust. I will also oversee the creation of a monthly podcast, which will consist of an interview from a different editor on the newspaper each week. This should also work to enhance understanding of how we operate.

Continue to be the best training newspaper in the country

The Daily Tar Heel is almost unique in the country in that it welcomes anyone and everyone to give journalism a shot. This is one of its most admirable qualities. As editor-in-chief, I will ensure that we continue this high-quality training, expanding it to several forms of media.

Standardize basic training among desks
Our current newsroom structure too often fails to adequately train staff writers before demanding from them thorough reporting. Orientation, held each semester, only touches on the most basic
newsroom policies, leaving very important aspects of training to each desk’s discretion. For example, how to conduct an interview is handled differently desk by desk. I will create mandatory, post-orientation training sessions conducted jointly by the editor-in-chief, the managing editor and the desk editor. They will set forth rules on interviewing, quoting and paraphrasing so nothing gets lost in the fray.

Allow staffers to branch out
Part of the mission of training journalists for the 21st century is training them in all aspects of the news gathering process. All staffers should be given the chance to expand their horizons. I will
implement a monthly “Try a Different Desk” day in which staffers will be given the opportunity to try out a new medium of reporting. Those on news desks will be encouraged to shoot video or photos, designers will be encouraged to report, and so on. Enhanced knowledge of the entire organization will make staffers take more ownership in their work, and it will better prepare them to be competitive journalists.

Work to recruit the best UNC has to offer
The Daily Tar Heel could do more to recruit the University’s best and brightest. Traditionally, the pool of applicants is dominated by journalism majors and aspiring journalists. This is only natural, but we could benefit from better publicizing The Daily Tar Heel as a way to learn about a wide variety of subjects, to improve one’s writing and to learn new skills. As editor-in-chief, I will work with the summer editor to publicize the newspaper at orientation sessions. And in the fall, I will organize delegations to visit classes in all departments. By recruiting students from a
more diverse background, the newspaper’s product will itself improve.