Sandwiched somewhere between hours of television, the occasional beach trip, and a fair share of tedious office jobs, Northwestern had one burning question this summer: Is it possible that the Forum page, with its consistently brilliant columnists and obscenely insightful editorials, get any better?
Well, we sure tried.
In the past we’ve gotten a lot of flack on our letters page from readers complaining about sub-par cartoons. The criticism mounted; so we responded by creating a new “cartoon editor” position solely in charge of bringing you smart, satirical cartoons on a daily basis. Sometimes it becomes hard to focus on everything and having a separate editor in charge of cartoons should improve quality. Or at least quell the criticism.
We’ve also tweaked our editorial procedure and expanded the staff a bit in an effort to make our editorials even more informed and the process more efficient.
The basic template, however, remains the same. This quarter we’ve lined up five smart, talented and witty columnists to keep you both entertained and informed. You can read all about them on Monday when we print their respective bios.
The schedule for the Forum Page also remains unchanged: Mondays and Thursdays we’ll run editorials crafted from the collective thinking from the editorial board of The Daily. As always, Forum will write about particularly newsworthy issues pertaining to NU, Evanston, or any other goings-on that need to be commented on.
Tuesdays we will run a guest column from any member of the NU community or Evanston resident. If you feel particularly passionate about something and a 250-word letter doesn’t do the trick, feel free to send us a full-length, 550-word column. If you don’t want to go ahead writing the entire thing without a guarantee that it will be published, by all means send us a brief summary and we’ll send you back comments. If the full-length looks good, we’ll run it.
Wednesdays, the City Desk will keep you up to date on important issues facing the greater Evanston community with its weekly “City Watch” column. Sometimes students don’t seem to pay much attention to city issues–read the column and impress your friends.
Fridays, we will continue to run our “thumbs up, thumbs down” column giving you a week’s worth of news and criticism in easily digestible morsels.
But, as always, the Forum page needs a hand from you, dear reader.
Did we not cover something the way you would have liked? Did one of the columnists infuriate you with some uninformed rant? Is the administration enacting some policy that just chaps your hide? Send us a letter. If need be, we’ll edit for length, content and grammar.
Oh, one thing–while we always want your letters, the Forum page is not the place to advertise. If you have a legitimate issue, we always want to hear what you have to say but we don’t like printing letters that read like press releases. Nobody likes feeling manipulated. But that being said, send us your thoughts and help us shape the page.
It feels good to get a byline.
Forum Editor Daniel Magliocco is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].
