When you’re the editor in chief of The Daily Northwestern, a “ding” from your phone often means dropping everything.
We’ve sped out of our apartments, woken up disoriented from short sleeps and cancelled plans with friends at the hands of breaking news alerts. Whether it was the $790 million federal funding freeze, the resignation of a sitting University president or Immigration and Customs Enforcement arriving in Evanston, we had to be ready to delegate, write and edit.
Our time at The Daily taught us the importance of adapting. Student journalists must report to the best of their ability, even when the timing is inconvenient, the issue is difficult to understand and the pressure from people and institutions is mounting.
While putting together this year’s Graduation Issue, we were thrown right back into the cycle of scheduling stories, pestering writers and designing a paper worthy of the Class of 2026’s time at Northwestern. It’s given us a space to reflect on our experiences as student journalists over these last four years.
We’ve adapted to changing landscapes in higher education and our communities here at home. We live in a time when groups like immigrants, international students and our fellow journalists have been made to live in fear, or worse. We’ve learned that our reporting has real impacts on real people. That’s a heavy responsibility.
Student journalists face the difficult task of reporting fairly and accurately while balancing classes, jobs, extracurriculars and social lives — with only a few years of experience, at most. Despite this challenge, we have tried our best to publish work that fairly records the major events and experiences of our community.
Our journeys at The Daily overlap in that we all faced a host of internal and external challenges while serving as reporters and editors. Some stories we published made readers on campus and in Evanston laugh, smile and celebrate. Other stories erred, failed to cover a community fairly or simply upset people. Again, we had to adapt, whether it was by correcting errors or meeting with affected sources in order to foster truthful, empathetic journalism.
At The Daily, we often remind ourselves that we are a “learning paper.”
As we work to thoughtfully and accurately cover our community, we are also training the next generation of journalists. Through learning how to adapt, we become better at our jobs — not only improving the paper for years to come, but also gaining important skills before we step into the next phases of our lives.
We encourage the next generation of Daily reporters and editors to be ready to adapt to anything. You will face major challenges, but you will also have awesome victories. Remember that people do not owe us their time or their stories — being a student journalist is a privilege, not a right. The stories The Daily tells are important, so even when it’s hard, give it your all.
As we leave Northwestern and officially say goodbye to The Daily, our biggest hope is that it will continue to grow and adapt. It is a joy to watch the paper you love — the place you dedicated years to — continue to evolve beyond the time you spent there.
Email: [email protected]
X: @LilyOgburn
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
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