In response to strident reactions to their April Fools’ issue, members of The Hoya staff voted Wednesday night to approve all four of the recommendations their Board of Directors laid out this Tuesday. The recommendations are intended to alter their office culture and improve the paper’s communication with the larger campus community.
The new initiatives create two new staff positions: one to oversee journalism and ethics training among staff writers and new recruits alike, and another, the Staff Development Assistant for Institutional Diversity, to ensure “the staff reflects the diversity of the University community,” according to Max Sarinsky (COL `09), the chair of the Board of Directors.
Andrew Dwulet (COL `10), The Hoya’s Editor-in-Chief, said The Hoya will also commit to hosting semesterly meetings for campus groups and individual students to comment on the paper’s coverage of campus issues, donating the advertising revenue from The Hoya’s April Fools’ issue to a cause that it will invite students to determine in the coming weeks, and having an independent, objective commission evaluate its coverage of campus news, although they have not determined what such a commission would look like.
Sarinsky said the Boards’ recommendations were inspired by the forum held Tuesday, April 7, which over 200 student attended to discuss how The Hoya could improve its coverage of campus issues and alter its internal structure to produce a staff more representative of the student body.
“There certainly were a lot of suggestions, and we’ve tried to take all the suggestions and think about them in the context of the entire community,” Sarinsky said of the forum, adding that he was confident that the changes “would improve our coverage and without jeopardizing and compromising our mission as an independent news source.”
Both Dwulet and Sarinsky said they doubted that the recent outcry over The Hoya’s April Fools’ issue, which expanded to include criticism that the paper regularly fails to cover a diverse enough range of topics, would threaten The Hoya’s plans to go independent, which the Voice previously reported is likely to happen soon based on their decision not to apply for University funding for next year. Both said that it was still unclear whether The Hoya, independent or not, will publish an April Fools’ issue next year.
“That’s a decision we’ll leave to next year’s staff,” Sarinsky said. “But if we do have an April Fools’ issue, it’ll certainly be more tasteful than it was this year.”
