The 2019-20 academic year at Concordia University is here. The familiar routine of book-buying, Tim-Horton-guzzling, shuttle-bus-taking, Stingers-cheering and library-seat-searching begins once again. For all returning students, welcome back to downtown living / NDG commuting. For all new students, welcome to Concordia, home of (the always terrifying) Buzz the mascot and the always-convenient Pizza Bella.
As The Concordian prepares for another busy year, our first editorial of the year is dedicated to what we’re doing differently in 2019-20.The biggest item on the agenda: we’re changing from a weekly printed newspaper to a bi-weekly printed newspaper, moving from 26 print issues a year to 16.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll be getting less news; the opposite actually. We felt like we were spending more time putting together a physical issue instead of reporting what was happening on campus in a timely manner. This change means we’re going to be able to provide you with more stories as we transition to a digital first approach.
There were a couple reasons for this decision. The first, of course, being to best serve the Concordia community. Another major reason was sustainability. Based on research done by The Concordian last year, we found that the vast majority of our readers catch up on Concordia news online. We also found that a lot of the physical copies of the paper weren’t being picked up, due to us printing too often and too many copies per issue.
This year, we’ve also reduced the number of copies to better reflect this. This means that we’re using significantly less paper. Our goal to have more students pick up copies of the paper without flooding both campuses with copies that will go unread. Keeping the print version of The Concordian was important to us because that’s how a lot of students first hear about us on campus. From there, many would then move from print, to being regular readers online.. It’s also the way many of our writers first heard of us.
This switch will help us better achieve our goal of producing consistent, timely, and valuable reporting to the Concordia community. Looking at the landscape of student journalism across Canada, we found that more and more publications have begun to take a digital-first approach, and that switch has helped them connect with their university communities more effectively.
For The Concordian, recognizing this trend in student media has helped us plan a clear vision for the future of the publication, which includes focusing on producing timely online content, producing more content, connecting with the Concordia community, being more environmentally conscious and preparing our staff for the digital needs of the media industry.
Anyways, that’s what’s new with us this year. From the editorial team at The Concordian, it’s good to be back. We look forward to waiting for the shuttle in -40°C with you.