Have you noticed anything different with the front page in the past three issues?
If you’re astute, you might have noticed a few differences. The Globe staff have been hard at work thinking up new ideas for newspaper layouts. We’ll just say it – our old masthead has gone the way of the flip phone. It may have been functional, but it was obsolete and not very nice to look at. Not to talk the new masthead up too much, but it is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, designed by Khalil Johnson, and upgrades The Globe from something people would look at and go “aww, a little, baby college newspaper,” to “this paper isn’t messing around.”
Good thing we really aren’t messing around – when it comes to reporting news on campus, there is nobody better than The Globe. Now that we want to write like the important pillar of the university we are, it is time for our publication to look as important too.
Last year, a few pieces were published about how much minimalism can drain the character out of someone’s life, which is curious considering our old masthead had no life in it left. The default font used in the masthead’s old design was already dull enough, but the Globe logo itself was painfully flat.
Why was it not changed sooner? The answers are simple: Time constraints, thanks to a tiny staff and the nagging voice of someone telling past editors, “It was always done this way.”
This is exactly what the current editorial team is trying to tackle. Just because something was done the same way for several years does not automatically make it good. That’s like saying it is smarter to cook the same meal repeatedly, but instead of trying to add or remove elements to improve your cooking, you make the food identically every single time because you’ve always done it that way.
Such thinking has plagued The Globe for at least eight years. If you were to pick up a copy from 2016 and compare it to one from Spring 2023, they’d look nearly identical. The pictures are in the same places, the articles are in the same places, and sometimes there aren’t any pictures on an entire half of a page.
Being complacent and not wanting to try anything unique with The Globe can only hurt us, which is why we have been trying out new design concepts as of late. We don’t want the paper to look the exact same every single week, and we also want the graphics to be something worth staring at. Our new crime report graphic is just one example of these beautiful, new graphics.
It’s understandable that tradition may be “sacred,” even in the context of a student-run newspaper. But when tradition is doing nothing for us other than holding us back, then what’s the point? Who is being made happy by delivering a low-quality product?
Such thinking does not only apply to The Globe – as students, we always need to question whether a process is truly working for us or if we need to change our thinking. While we have been making changes to the appearance of our newspaper and the culture that surrounds our reporting, you could be making life changes that benefit you more than sticking with the same thing for years.
That is why we hope to bring the quality of pieces up too – this is not your “we need something, anything to be able to just fill the pages” Globe. We do not miss the burnout Globe caused by a few people doing the work of many for years. The Globe is spinning once again, and we hope you enjoy the changes seen throughout the semester.
We’re always open to suggestions, too.