As the year has progressed, we have learned a lot about staff members from the blogs they write for the website.

Sarah speaking:

When our a&e editor Austin Gillespie wrote a blog defending the show Toddlers & Tiaras, I instantly realized he would become a pageant dad someday. Austin’s blog is just one of 10 that now run on the website. When the site was first launched, there were only around 3-4 blogs that were updated approximately once a month. This year, our site has blogs on topics from ballet to cooking that are published weekly. I think the audience has learned a lot about the newspaper staff and so have I. For example, I had no idea Karlton Kinley liked Miles Davis until I read his blog. I didn’t know that managing editor Sarah Gonzales has over 10 different types of cooking pots before it came up in a conversation about her blog. All of the other blogs, like designer Brandon Burnworth’s website blog, web editor Kaitlin Rounds’ book blog and cartoonist Adam Henderson’s drawing blog are just as interesting to me. I am glad the website has become a place for so many staff members to take something they like and run with it.

Jill speaking:

I think it is really interesting getting to read what everyone has to say when they put up their blogs. Journalism can be so fact based that blogs are a nice relief mechanism for the constant hustle and bustle of having to go to interviews, search for information, and write an unbiased story. It is always fun to get to read everyone’s personal writing style when they complete their blogs, and I like being able to see their voices shine through in them. I too believe that the blogs on our website cover a great range of topics and I think that there is an audience for each of them as they are each interesting in their own right. I’m glad that our website can be a source of news as well as fun opinion pieces to break it up. I believe we have learned a lot about our staff members through their blogs and I truly enjoy getting to read them as they are posted each week.

Lesson of the week:

1. It’s fun to get to know your staff by reading the writing that they do over topics of their choice.

Lesson 21 of being an editor-in-chief: Check.