LFTE: The Collegian is happy to be transitioning to an alt-weekly

Katrina Leibee

September 22, 2021

Graphic illustration depicting hands holding a parchment letter that reads "Letter from the Editor" surrounded by a collage of envelopes in the background — (Graphic Illustration by Jake Dunaetz | The Collegian)

Dear Readers,

We are so happy to be starting out the 2021-22 school year so strong. Already, we have reported on campus dining halls closing, discussed protests around hateful anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric on The Plaza, brought you the most up-to-date sports, music and arts coverage and even taught you about fun cannabis products.

If you don’t keep up with the trials and tribulations of being a journalist in this day and age, you might not know that print journalism is dying. The number of newspapers that print a daily paper has fallen by 28% in the last 50 years. Over 300 newspapers in the United States closed in 2020, taking away the jobs of journalists, editors, photographers and designers everywhere.

As The Collegian attempts to stay afloat in a print news world that is sinking, we have to change the way we do journalism to better suit an audience that is digital-first. We tailor our content to online, as we know most of our readers are students walking to class and pulling up our website on a mobile device. But we also recognize the importance of a print paper that you can pick up and flip through the pages of, and we’re refocusing our content to better serve a weekly audience.

We ask that you, the readers, remember we are doing this not just for the love of community journalism but also to continue providing readers with relevant content all week long while giving students the educational opportunity of getting to create a print paper.”

For this reason, The Collegian is now an alternative-weekly, that is, a newspaper that only prints once a week. This changes the way we write our content. We search for stories that will be fresh and interesting for an entire week while the paper sits on stands. It is why we made the tough decision to take weekly coverage of City Council and Associated Students of Colorado State University meetings out of print and replace them with more evergreen stories.

It changes the way we design our paper, as we recognize the visuals and cover have to be even more interesting and attention-grabbing. Internally, it changes the way we produce our newspaper and how our staff runs. It’s an exciting time but also a scary one.

We ask that you, the readers, remember we are doing this not just for the love of community journalism but also to continue providing readers with relevant content all week long while giving students the educational opportunity of getting to create a print paper. Having the opportunity to write a story for print, design a page, place a photo, create the cover, copy edit a page or plan a special edition are all invaluable experiences. Plus, nothing bonds friends more than sending a paper to print together, knowing you’ll never get it back and thousands of copies of your work will be distributed the next day.

We ask for the support of readers in this transition, and we hope to see more readership and engagement with this change.

Katrina Leibee, editor in chief

Serena Bettis, content managing editor

Devin Cornelius, digital and design managing editor

The editorial board can be reached at editor@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.

About the Contributor

Katrina Leibee, Editor-in-Chief

Katrina Leibee is serving as The Rocky Mountain Collegian's editor in chief for the 2021-22 academic year. Leibee started at The Collegian during the fall of her freshman year writing for the opinion desk. She then moved up to assistant opinion editor and served as the opinion director for the 2020-21 academic year. Leibee is a journalism and political science double major, but her heart lies in journalism. She enjoys writing, editing and working with a team of people to create the paper more than anything. Ask anyone, Leibee loves her job at The Collegian and believes in the great privilege and opportunity that comes with holding a job like this. The biggest privilege is getting to work with a team of such smart, talented editors, writers, photographers and designers. The most important goal Leibee has for her time as editor in chief is to create change, and she hopes her and her staff will break the status quo for how The Collegian has previously done things and for what a college newspaper can be. From creating a desk dedicated entirely to cannabis coverage to transitioning the paper into an alt-weekly, Leibee hopes she can push the boundaries of The Collegian and make it a better paper for its readers and its staff. Leibee is not one to accept a broken system, sit comfortably inside the limits or repeat the words, "That's the way we've always done things." She is a forward thinker with a knack for leadership, and she has put together the best staff imaginable to bring The Collegian to new heights.

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