Lucas Gebhart/ Madison Shumway
Editor-in-Chief/ Life Editor
At the beginning of last semester, this newspaper was on life support. We were an understaffed, underfunded, deserted newsroom using equipment bought way too long ago. To say The Bengal required a clean slate is an understatement. But we didn’t just clean the slate, we threw the old slate away.
The Fall 2018 edition of The Bengal, as some of you have observed, looks very different than our final spring edition. This semester, you’ll notice an expanded staff, a full-color paper and a distribution route that puts our content more directly in the hands of our readers.
What you see today is the result of a summer overhaul, one that has completely reshaped the way this paper operates and, in turn, has changed the content.
Flipping through this issue of The Bengal, you’ll see cleaner typefaces, more vibrant colors and a simplified layout. We’ve modernized our masthead (and removed the tiger eyes that stared at readers from the top of the page). We’ve made images the focal point of many stories, highlighting the work of our staff photographers. We’ve also rearranged our printing budget so that each issue comes off the presses in eight pages of color.
We hope these changes will result in a more pleasant experience for our readers, who previously navigated wonky lines, dated fonts and boring black-and-white. As we publish each issue this year, we’ll use our updated design as inspiration to produce creative, fresh, engaging stories for the ISU community to enjoy.
We haven’t just revamped the paper’s look. Our newsroom has also undergone a transformation this summer. The main source of our issues at The Bengal stemmed from our equipment, which forced us to operate in a dysfunctional way. We had six computers in our office, but only three worked. Only one of those three had the program installed in which we lay the paper out. So, we asked ASISU for new equipment, and they came through with a one-time budget increase of $5,500, which allowed us to purchase new camera equipment and four new iMacs.
Now, instead of one person laying out the entire newspaper every week, all editors can now help in the production process. Instead of one person, we now have seven. More eyes on the computer means less mistakes in the paper—an area in which, as ISU’s primary form of campus news, we’re striving to improve.
Our new equipment not only helps us improve our coverage, but allows us to train new journalists, photographers, designers and editors. We are a student newspaper, which means our staff members are learning how a newspaper works and how it operates. Thanks to our upgraded newsroom, we can better offer hands-on learning opportunities to ISU students who want to work a camera, design publications and produce quality content.
Another huge change to The Bengal that will do nothing but benefit us is the addition of new staffing positions. New to The Bengal this year is an associate editor and sales representative positions. The associate editor adds another layer to our editing process. The sales representative position will help promote The Bengal in the community and bring in advertising revenue so we can hire more student staff, cover more campus and local news and continue to publish the hard-hitting, news-breaking or just plain fun content that ISU students and faculty deserve.
We at The Bengal recognize the significance of this paper’s 117-year history. The changes we’ve implemented this summer reflect our commitment to providing the ISU community with quality news coverage and our disappointment that The Bengal has sometimes fallen short of that expectation. Our new look, new staff, new publishing process—and this editorial—represent our efforts to publish a campus newspaper that meets our readers’ needs. We hope that you’ll offer your feedback, story suggestions and letters to the editor to make this newspaper the best it can be.
