A vision for The Cor Chronicle for this school year
Dear Students, Faculty and Staff of the University of Dallas,
My name is Giovanni Del Piero and I am honored to be this year’s editor in chief of The Cor Chronicle. I have had the pleasure of being a staff writer for the paper since I was a sophomore, as well as the junior editor in chief last semester under my predecessor, Katherine Frediani.
I am grateful for the staff that I get to work with over the course of this year. We have an excellent group of both returning and new writers and editors who are both passionate and dedicated to making The Cor Chronicle the best newspaper it can be. I am very pleased with the first six issues that we have published and I’m confident that this current issue will be just as well received.
The paper’s website describes The Cor Chronicle as “student run [and] student created,” and I think that is what makes our paper unique. We are entirely student-directed, from the writers who work diligently during the week to conduct interviews and produce articles, to the editors who put together the paper over the weekend and Monday night to create what members of the UD community find waiting for them in the news kiosks on Wednesday mornings.
It is this student driven aspect that we wish to improve upon for this year while I am editor in chief, and we plan to do this through two main goals.
Firstly, while the staff and I are dedicated to improving upon the great work that The Cor Chronicle has done and continues to do, we are also integrating new features to help the paper expand its reach and improve its content. We have already taken concrete steps to achieve this. We have been experimenting with new video reels on our paper’s Instagram account (@ thecorchronicle) and given our online advertising for articles an updated look.
We also debuted the newest section of the paper in issue two, the “Features” section, which focuses on longer form articles that tackle larger topics in a more in-depth approach and integrate visual features. We are collaborating with groups across campus such as Student Government, working on providing greater representation for UD’s Student Athletes, and helping to raise awareness for the student body’s concerns, such as mental health services. There are plenty of new and exciting improvements for The Cor Chronicle that will be made over the course of the year.
But most importantly, my main goal as editor in chief is for The Cor Chronicle to live up to its purpose of being a newspaper for the whole UD community by establishing a greater presence on campus and being more active in the larger life of the University of Dallas.
During my time both as a writer and editor, I have become aware of the fact that many people at UD do not know how the newspaper operates. They may know the paper from what they see on Wednesday, but they never see the week of writing, the weekend of editing, and the many hours on Monday night of laying out the paper to have it printed and shipped to UD on time. This often leads to misconceptions about how the paper works and what we as journalists actually do.
Part of our initiative to provide greater visibility for the paper is establishing a schedule of “office hours,” where I or one of our section editors will be in the newsroom on first floor Braniff and be available to chat with students about the newspaper. If you are interested in writing, have suggestions or questions, or have an idea for a story we should write, stop by our office and we would be more than happy to chat!
We also remain committed to being a neutral publishing platform for all UD students. Our motto is “veritatem in lucem proferre”, which means “bringing truth to light.” We desire to keep the campus informed about events related to the university, and anyone at UD is welcome to come forward to the paper and help in reporting events that they feel the campus needs to know about as well as express opinions on topics related to the perennial human endeavor to pursue the true, good and beautiful.
My hope is that these goals will help to strengthen The Cor Chronicle’s presence on campus and increase our involvement with the community. We appreciate the university’s support in our endeavors and we hope to make this a successful and memorable year for both The Cor Chronicle and UD as a whole!