Letter from the Managing Board

As another summer comes to a close and students return to our home away from home on the Hill, we, the Managing Board of The Tufts Daily, would like to introduce our plan of action for the upcoming semester. Central to this plan is our continual aim to increase outreach in crafting accurate and comprehensive coverage of the greater Tufts community.

Among the many projects we plan to implement is a readership survey that we will send to Tufts students, faculty and staff to gather preliminary feedback about where we are succeeding in our coverage and where we can improve in it. We also hope to expand our outreach efforts to areas where we have previously seen little success in recruitment -- especially students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts (SMFA) and transfer students.

While our primary focus is to represent Tufts in its entirety, we have to place our community within the context of the cities that host it, understanding that our school's presence both enriches and endangers their character.

To that end, the Daily will cover Medford and Somerville more extensively this semester. We hope to inform students and staff about local politics and culture. We aim to give a voice to local residents, and we strive to present the surrounding neighborhoods as independent and long-standing entities, rather than simply as appendages of the Tufts community.

After launching our app last semester, one of our goals continues to be updating the ways in which our content is accessed. We’re working to continue updating our app and redesigning our website to provide a better platform to view the hard work put in by every person involved with the Daily.

In addition, the comment section of our website is now disabled, after it far too frequently served as a host for personal attacks and bigotry. The Daily refuses to provide a platform for hateful rhetoric, and our website should be no exception.

Too often in our print coverage we fall back on basic templates and known layouts. We hope to allow more room for experimentation this semester, and to use the presentation of an article to further the story it tells, while maintaining a professional appearance.

It is our responsibility to ensure that traditionally marginalized voices are not excluded from our coverage. To that end, our staff will meet with our Intentionality and Inclusivity Committee to discuss how to be conscientious in our reporting, in our production and in every aspect of making the Daily. As a college publication, our reporting should cover all campus groups and communities.

Finally, financial constraints should never prevent people from contributing to the Daily. Over the last year we’ve solidified our work-study and support-fund programs, and we will continue to expand our support. Above all, we are dedicated to making the Daily inclusive in both our coverage and in our community.

Sincerely,

Gil Jacobson, editor-in-chief

Eddie Samuels, managing editor

Joe Walsh, managing editor

Zachary Hertz, associate editor

Evan Sayles, production director