Our promise to our readers

Well, here we are. It’s the start of another Fall semester. Freshmen are moving in, our graduate friends are gone, and the world is changing. The Alligator isn’t immune to that.

To those of you who don’t know, we announced over the Summer that we will no longer print daily and instead move to three days a week. For decades, countless students have slaved away to print articles every weeknight, foregoing homework and sleep for the sake of journalism. In our time here as editors, we haven’t seen people nearly as committed and hardworking as those who produce this paper.

While we move into a three-day-a-week publishing schedule, we at the Alligator are writing to promise you, dear reader, that our work ethic won’t change. The paper will no longer be different every morning when you pass by the newsstands on Turlington Plaza, but that doesn’t mean our staff is going to start slacking. Quite the contrary. We at the Alligator intend to continue producing news for the Gainesville and UF community daily. Our website will be updated frequently as we dive into a digital newsroom. For the record, a digital newsroom is becoming the standard now that everyone gets their news from Facebook or Twitter.

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times since November 2016, but journalism is becoming more important than ever. We have a president who criticizes legitimate journalism as “fake news.” Our moral codes are tested as we stare in the face of the country’s hate, which has always been closer to home than we realize. As members of “the media,” we urge you, dear readers, to pay attention to what’s happening in the world around you. Watch the news, listen to NPR or pick up a newspaper. As journalists, our primary goal is to tell others’ stories. Listen to them, because we don’t plan to stop telling them.

Leading the Alligator into this new format is incredibly daunting and humbling. Newspapers have traditionally been slow to change, but in our unusual times we have to adapt to stay alive.

As the editors of the Alligator, we promise to continue producing fair, balanced content to all of our readers. We will work harder than ever before to write stories that matter and get them to you as fast as possible. The number of printed papers may decrease, but the passion and hard work of our staff will not.

It’s the start of another semester, and the Alligator is here to stay.