From Kent Malmros', "Everything Old is New Again," Fall '99 From Kent Malmros', "Everything Old is New Again," Fall '99Every day, we print 14,000 copies of The Daily Pennsylvanian, and you read them. Historically, there has been very little communication between our readers and our staff. You can write letters to the editor or call our offices to applaud or complain about something we have done. But we never truly ask you to give us feedback about our layout or our coverage. It is time to change that. As the executive editor of the DP, I spend a good deal of time discussing the way we operate and our reasons for doing certain things. Unfortunately, most of those discussions are with a couple dozen student leaders and administrators. But there are 24,000 other members of the Penn community reading our paper on a daily basis and your opinions are important to us. So from now on, I want to give you a way to make yourselves heard. Every Thursday night, I will put aside an hour, beginning at 7 p.m., to discuss the DP as much as you would like. I will be at Chats and I will be at your disposal. Take a look at my headcut and come introduce yourself to me. We as a staff have a responsibility to report the news in the clearest and most objective manner possible. We have a responsibility to provide a forum for ideas and free expression. And we have a responsibility to keep getting better as we do these things. Most of you probably take for granted that we work hard to get better. We continually look inward to find innovative ways to make our newspaper as good as it can be. But we need to start looking outward to our readership, giving them the chance to tell us what they like about us -- and what they don't like about us. For example, I may learn that spelling errors are people's greatest source of frustration when reading the news pages. Or there may be larger concerns. Students may have the opportunity to simply talk about their disappointment with lack of minority coverage in the DP or the lack of feature writing. By opening such channels of conversation, I will be able to identify problems that may have escaped our attention and talk with you about solutions that may not have occurred to us. If you know about a student who is of interest, we might not. Surely, there will be some of you who might want to just come and sit down with me and complain about issues that have bothered you for months, or even years. That's fine, too. For my part, the dialogue will give me the chance to explain how journalists work and what we try to accomplish. Such a conversation will provide me the opportunity to educate you about our product while you are educating me. Though such conversations may not lead to resolutions, they will lead to better understanding -- and that may be the beginning of positive change. I want to spend this semester trying to find out what students, faculty, staff and administrators want out of the DP. By setting a weekly meeting time, I hope to create a forum for conversation that will examine not only our coverage of issues but also your perceptions of media coverage on a larger scale. This will allow us to learn from you and it may give you the opportunity to understand just a little better what it is that we are trying to do. This semester will be one of change and improvement. We certainly will not be perfect -- no newspaper is. But don't ignore us when we make a mistake. Come find me tonight and help us find the solutions.
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