It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since we became the 2018-19 Mirror editorial board. But, here it is, our last issue. In our first ed-board, we outlined our goals for our time here, and I’m happy to report that not only did we achieve all of those goals, we surpassed them and accomplished so much more. Together, we reduced our print circulation while dramatically increasing our online presence, both on our website and our social media. While we didn’t double our followers, we revolutionized our content and have been reliably posting articles relevant to the student body every weekday. Our Instagram page has also taken off, and we created the record-holding Mirror post when we shared the news about the beach flooding and the students who used the opportunity to sail down the streets!
More importantly, we completely overhauled everything about our print issues. During the past year, we’ve released nearly a dozen intense investigative pieces, from updates about Fairfield University’s connection to the Catholic Church Sexual Abuse scandal, to breaking the news about the surprising campus statistics on mental health and starting an investigation into the mold caused by water leaks on campus – a continuous investigation that has directly resulted in the University beginning to resolve these problems.
Continuing on improvement of our print content, ed-board members Alicia Phaneuf and Cara Lee both hail from Vine section backgrounds and wanted to spread creativity throughout the paper and Deanna Carbone, with her on-point eye, was equally interested. Since we began, it has been pointed out by numerous readers, school faculty and staff that each section of our issues have become even more professional looking as well as more visually pleasing.
We’ve also succeeded in a number of our other goals. Our writing staff is bigger than ever, we never had to be in the office until the sun rose – and we even made it out before midnight FOUR times.
We can’t take all of the credit. We have our amazing staff to thank for helping us to accomplish these goals. It also wasn’t all easy. There were a lot of trials and tears along the way. The Mirror finances collapsed, and we spent a lot of time re-working the very framework of your favorite student newspaper. But, we’ve come a long way from the frantic ed-board that stayed an hour past the first issue was completed because we couldn’t get it to send to the printer.
Now it’s come full circle. Out with the old, in with the new. You heard it here – welcome former Opinion editor Lexi Thimble, the 2019-20 Editor in Chief!
