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Turn and face the strange

Editorial

In the last year, the University of Wyoming’s changes have affected the Branding Iron. One of the major changes that we experienced was a change of location. Due to the Union Visioning Plan, student media is temporarily located at the Beta House all the way by the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts.

Consequently, we’ve had some issues with developing the space in our new location, which has resulted in the paper being less than par. However, we are chugging along and are excited for what the new year has to offer. We have finally gotten the majority of our staff hired and are working towards filling the paper with all original content by NEXT WEEK.

Along with the change of location, we’re using this opportunity to broaden our scope and our purpose on campus. We are working on having a paper that provides essential information for students, staff and residents in Laramie, as well as across the state. We hope that by opening our mind to the possibilities of the new space, we will be able to accomplish these goals. We have redesigned the paper, the website and our editorial staff in order to make these changes successful.

The redesign of the paper and the website are pretty self-explanatory if you look at either of these media platforms. The paper has a new header and font variation, which we hope will highlight both our creativity and our seriousness when it comes to reporting on important events. For the editorial staff, however, these changes would be hard to notice if you are not a part of the Branding Iron staff, so we decided to break down the changes for you on each position.

Editor-in-Chief: Oversees all of the daily operations of the paper, including ensuring that the paper is running smoothly and is meeting your high standards.

News Editor: Works to fill the paper with stories that are timely, proximal, significant and of interest to the public. The major change here is that the news editor will now budget the majority of the stories that run in the paper in an effort to cover as much of the important things happening on campus as possible.

Assistant News Editor: Assists the News Editor in accomplishing all of the duties set forth by the Editor-in-Chief.

Enterprise Editor: In the past, this position has had many names, like the features editor or the arts and entertainment editor. This position requires budgeting stories related to events on campus, highlighting students and staff for their accomplishments on campus and around Laramie.

Visual Editor: Oversees all the graphics, from photographs to vectors, being placed into the paper.

Night Editor: Lays out the paper and submits the pages to the printer. These editors are in charge of making sure everything looks appealing and has proper grammar and adheres to AP Style.

Online Editor: Oversees all the content being uploaded online, including news broadcasts and podcasts, video tagalongs for important news stories, sports stories and informational videos. Also, runs the social media platforms in an effort to encourage audience development and engagement.

Sports Editor: Edits sports stories to be run on the website at UWBrandingIron.com in an effort to maintain relevancy with the sporting events that are being reported on.

Broadcast Manager: Creates, produces and edits videos for the online section including the news broadcasts and the video tagalongs for news stories.

The changes in Branding Iron’s production will help regain its relevancy on campus. We will continue to produce student written content as we have in the past, and are excited to get back to this standard NEXT WEEK. The opportunities we have in this new space and the future potential of Branding Iron are limitless.

Because of our slow start and our eagerness to restore the paper back to being all original content, we are currently seeking students at the university to apply to be a writer or even a member of our editorial board.

If these changes are something you would like to be a part of don’t hesitate to apply online to help us bring our Branding Iron vision into fruition. As a team, we will work together to be journalists. We owe it to our readers to be the best we can be. So there will be no more 2-year-old sport stories running. Instead, we will be bringing relative and relatable content.

Please pick up the Branding Iron Tuesday through Friday of each week to read the current local news and learn more about events happening around campus.

If you have any questions or concerns please email bi@uwyo.edu and we will be happy to answer all of your questions.

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