Hello from the 2021-2022 editors

From left to right: Photos of Zach Zimmerman, Emily Crebs and Emily Zeiler.

*Editor’s Note: This column was written by editor-in-chief Emily Crebs, managing editor Zach Zimmerman and digital managing editor Emily Zeiler. 

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the coronavirus pandemic, it’s that the future is not guaranteed. 

For over a year now, college life has been drastically altered by the pandemic. And like thousands of publications across the country, The New Political has had to transition to a completely remote newsroom. It remains uncertain if we will be able to work in-person next academic year.

Yet life and reality are starting to seem hopeful. As people are becoming vaccinated, freedom from the pandemic seems like a newfound hope we are able to grasp onto. More students are out and about on campus, businesses are starting to reopen and the end of restrictions have already been planned. This has given us a great deal of desire that normalcy is within reach, allowing for us to work together, in person, and not while staring at a screen.

We hope to return to some sense of the old normal for the 2021-2022 school year by being in newsroom with our colleagues, interacting with and learning from each other both personally and professionally all while growing as journalists.

But even if we won’t be back to the way things used to be, The New Political will continue to move forward.

With more of our staff returning to campus this upcoming fall, we plan to reclaim The New Political’s identity as a digital-first publication. We plan to release more video series, more episodes of our podcast Athens Happens and more multimedia elements with all of our content.

And we hope to deliver more in-depth coverage of stories our audience needs to know about.

There have been growing pains this year as we’ve adapted to a remote newsroom. It’s difficult to drum up the same enthusiasm and passion for journalism through a Teams call, especially with the looming stress of the pandemic. We lost the serendipitous moments of inspiration and learning that came from working physically together. Even if we are unable to meet in Scripps Hall every night next semester, we hope to recreate opportunities for those moments.

We couldn’t be more proud of our staff who have continued to report the news while enduring this pandemic for over a year now. Our freshman and senior reporters alike have shown the impressive resilience of student journalists as they conducted the same work, but through almost completely remote means. We’ve worked hard to provide the same comprehensive political coverage for our audience to inform and educate about relevant and important news topics.

We are excited to be the next executive editors. It is an honor to have the opportunity to lead a publication of such high quality and reputation. Though we do not know what the future may look like in the fall, we are excited to help to lead and continue the amazing work that we and our peers have done in the past.