Dear Readers,

This weekend, you may have noticed that our site was down for some time and returned Saturday afternoon with a visual overhaul. This new website will be a great benefit to readers and Daily staffers immediately and in the long run as we continue to realize its full potential.

The site will immediately boost the user experience, as it has improved landing pages, featured story boxes, similar stories at the bottom of articles and expanded author pages. Photos (and eventually videos) will take a more central role in the presentation of our content. You can now browse stories by most-viewed, most-commented and editors’ picks, all making for a better reader experience.

But the site’s current benefits pale in comparison to what we have in store and what this site will enable us to do. The decision to invest in a new site is the first step in a transition for our organization to work as a truly modern, efficient newsroom; while we have flirted with apps and site redesigns before, they have always been inexplicably detached from our production process.

A powerful new website means nothing if we don’t change our mindset and tailor our content to the different mediums we are using.

The site accompanies a reorganization of our editorial structure away from a static system that was based on our print schedule to a more fluid, digital-first strategy that will enable us to push content around the clock. We have hired web and layout editors to make sure that our content is displayed in the most visually appealing and interactive ways in both print and on the web. We have hired a multimedia editor with professional-level experience in producing videos and are working on exciting content collaboration projects with other organizations.

While we are proud of what we have accomplished so far, there is still an enormous amount of work to do as we work to create innovative new methods to shape the community dialogue while continuing to produce the top-notch content we have prided ourselves on for the last 120 years.

There are so many people to thank for this great new site: the Friends of The Stanford Daily for their generous funding, Daily executive editor Brendan O’Byrne and COO Margaret Rawson for their months of tireless work in bringing this project to fruition, and the great SemiBig team of John McConnico, David Sharpe, Wes Garcia and Kathy Riani for helping us along the way.

If you would like to get involved with The Daily, as a student contributor or another publication looking to collaborate, please email me at [email protected]. If you like the new site and want to support us as we continue to grow and work on exciting projects, please consider donating your time and/or money at [email protected].

Thank you, and enjoy the first iteration of the beautiful new site.

Best,
Billy Gallagher
President and editor in chief, Vol. CCXLII