I have had an incredible experience serving as the Lutrinae’s editor-in-chief this school year. I have continued to learn so much about the amazing world of journalism and what it is like to lead a newsroom. I have also learned a lot about myself and will take these lessons with me in every future job and experience of my career and life.
I want to thank my amazing staff this year – you all have truly made an impact on this paper and will have legacies to be remembered! It has been so wonderful to see you all grow and fall in love with our newsroom. I hope I have been the editor you needed me to be. I can’t wait to see what you all do in the future! I’ve had such a blast working with you all.
Thank you to our faculty advisor, Dave Kellogg – your mentorship to us all does not go unnoticed, and I am very grateful for your guidance these past two years.
This has been a valuable year of work for the Lutrinae (although I may be inserting some bias here!). We have done a great job of staying on top of breaking news from the library bomb threat to the housing crisis and covering issues impacting students to the best of our ability. We have 12 paid staff members and five to eight contributing writers (who don’t get paid). We have seen an increase in participation in our newsroom and are only continuing to grow. We work tirelessly to cover as much of campus as possible. I hope our readers have appreciated our reporting and, as a result, feel more informed about campus issues and have a deeper connection to their campus community.
We could not see our immense growth without our readers. Thank you for reading, liking, sharing and commenting on our stories. Our newsroom is relatively small and your support means a lot. Continuing to support us will help our newsroom grow and our capacity to cover more issues will increase.
I am also, again, so proud of this team for winning three awards at the California College Media Association conference – Best Feature Story, Best Infographic and second place for Best Non-Breaking News Story. We went up against some schools with much larger enrollments and resources than ours, so it meant a lot to celebrate this accomplishment.
The future of the Lutrinae is in good hands with Layna Hughes, one of our staff writers, who will be stepping into the editor role next semester. I am excited to join the team as a senior staff writer for my last semester here. Stay tuned to read about what will be impacting students next semester, as we know the university is rapidly changing.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me and the Lutrinae. Volume 8 will have a special place in my heart!
Yours truly,
Paige Francis
Editor in chief of the Lutrinae