The Daily Tar Heel
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The Daily Tar Heel

Column: New semester, renewed mission

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Winter break is over. We’re back and ready to report. Spring is a time of growth, and that is what you should expect from this semester’s The Daily Tar Heel. 

Spring has always been my favorite of the two semesters. While I prefer fall weather, I always think spring semester is more fun for some reason. This is also my last semester at UNC and the DTH. To answer the question upfront: no, I haven’t figured out exactly what I want to do yet. 

While I’ll be using this time to polish my resume and apply to jobs, I’ll most importantly continue to ensure The Daily Tar Heel doesn’t make the same mistakes of the past and continues to live up to its potential. 

Last semester was a rough one at the DTH. The economic problems facing the DTH are still there, and as the staff looked to fix them, it was easy to feel overwhelmed, especially when we still had jobs, school and other issues going on in the same time. 

While I am incredibly proud of what the DTH staff accomplished last semester, I think this one will be even better. 

We’ve cut back on spending, found a focus and thankfully discovered more supporters than we expected.

Everyone from community members to professors donated to our fundraising campaign, which goes to educating student journalists. Graduates have stepped up and agreed to help with professional development. And there's even a book coming up about us and our impact on UNC history. 

The problems the paper face have no quick solutions, but having a sense of purpose and friends to help along the way gives me hope that everything is going to work out in the end if we put forth the needed effort. 

As our founders first said, this paper is going to continue to “contain a summary of all occurrences in the University and village of Chapel Hill.” But we aim to do even more — we now cover Carrboro and a much wider scope of news.

This spring, expect investigations into specific corners of our community, features on interesting topics and people and conversation-starting opinions. 

Internally, we’re looking to add a position just for community engagement to make sure we’re remaining audience-focused. 

Last semester I said we wanted to become the leading voice on community issues and to earn people’s trust. That's hard for any paper, and especially difficult for a student one. 

I learned a lot from the paper’s mistakes, and we want to take that knowledge and apply it further this semester. We also want to reflect you and your values. 

As always, we want to hear from you. Swing by our office, write a letter, email me at editor@dailytarheel.com. I don’t always have time to respond to every email in a meaningful way, but I do read them. 

I hope you enjoy the Spring 2018 Daily Tar Heel. 

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