The Daily Tar Heel
Printing news. Raising hell. Since 1893.
Thursday, March 28, 2024 Newsletters Latest print issue

We keep you informed.

Help us keep going. Donate Today.
The Daily Tar Heel

Memet Walker: Different faces, new stories

Memet Walker is running for Editor-in-chief of The Daily Tar Heel for the 2013-14 school year.

Read Memet’s profile.

The DTH is an important part of the UNC experience. Our job is to provide students, and the community as a whole, with news that’s relevant to their lives. That has many parts.

Make print come alive

Getting the stories first: If we’re going to be the primary source for campus news, we need to be the first with campus news.

The (Raleigh) News & Observer has fewer reporters on the ground each day, our writers are embedded on campus at all hours, 24/7 — every breaking story relating to UNC is ours to lose.

Telling the right stories: We have students on campus who have seen combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. We have professors smuggling drugs abroad. He clearly enjoyed telling his story to The New York Times — it should have been in the DTH.

There are all kinds of great stories out there. We need to find more.

Remembering our primary audience: At the end of the day, we’re writing to the kid in ECON 101 who’s worried about failing class, paying back his student loans or getting nailed on the head with a runaway acorn. If you can bring him the stories he wants, you can get him to read the stories he needs.

Social media: The internet’s the best way we can stay connected and relevant in people’s lives. If used better, social media can get us more eyes online, and best of all, more hands on print.

Expanding our use of it: Our biggest competition for students’ attention during the day isn’t another paper — it’s Twitter and Facebook.

Both direct traffic to our website, get people talking about our articles and are completely free advertising.

We should create a social media team to engage the community and bring them with us into the newsroom throughout the day. As editors, we should be engaging with the public as often as we can.

The online experience

Keeping content fresh: Our website should actively rotate its stories throughout the day to keep people coming back.

Stimulating more conversation on our website: Often, when our stories go viral, it’s the comments left by readers (as much as the story itself) that get people laughing, talking and — more importantly — picking up papers. Why make it harder by requiring a verified address?

Expanding our staff

Diversifying the DTH newsroom: We can make the DTH more inclusive. When hiring editors, we should do our best to build a team that reflects the diversity of the campus community it represents. Part of uncovering great stories is bringing in new perspectives.

Actively recruiting the University’s best talent: We should take a more pro-active role in filling all jobs at the paper.

Let’s find the Mark Zuckerbergs in the computer science department who would never think of joining the paper but have the know-how to revolutionize our website. Let’s ask UNC musicians to create music for multimedia. Let’s find student artists who might not have an interest in journalism but could make our pages come alive.

The bottom line is, the more people that are involved in the paper, the more people that pick up the paper.

To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.

Providing better (and specialized) training: To improve training, we should mandate the kind of training a staffer’s current job demands. For example, state, city and campus writers should all know how to make a public records request; an arts critic might not.

Everyone should be briefed in breaking news reporting, fact checking and libel. All writers should be trained in the basics of photography. If we asked every writer to come back with photos for their story, we’d widen our options for print, and they’d improve their prospects for finding work.