Foggy Bottom is a place of change. As the mantra states, “Something happens here.” Politicians come and go in Washington, buildings are erected on campus, professors change and theories in academia shift. The Hatchet tries to cover it all – but we are changing too and we want you to come along.
As you pick up the paper this morning, you are holding a medium that’s quickly going out of style. While The Hatchet is wholly committed to printing the news in paper form, we are also rapidly expanding our online operations. Sam Salkin, a former Hatchet senior staff writer and senior majoring in geography, is this newspaper’s first multimedia editor. He has an unrivaled enthusiasm for the Internet and has pioneered two new features on GWHatchet.com: Monday’s weekly podcast and Thursday’s video feature. The video is meant to give our readers a look into some of the more interesting – and often quirky – things on campus. This year, Salkin has already taken an exclusive look into GW’s Package Services, followed University President Steven Knapp around on a walking tour and attended fraternity rushes around campus.
Salkin – with several other editors and reporters contributing – also compiles the weekly podcast, which is available through iTunes and on GWHatchet.com. The feature gives students a chance to hear new bands, listen to reporters and editors explain big stories and administrators defend decisions and policies. The best part about these new features is that you can easily access them through our new multimedia Web portal: media.gwhatchet.com.
Another exciting feature is our alert service. GW Hatchet Alerts is a text- and e-mail-based system that can notify our readers of breaking news on the go. In the future, we hope to expand the service to allow for basketball scores from Hatchet reporters courtside across the country.
And we’re not done yet. More changes are in store for The Hatchet. In the next month, we will be re-launching our blog site with new features and adding the ability to comment on our stories.
Crosswords in class are fun, but embrace the change and come visit us online. Sign up for our alerts. See the videos. Something does happen here, but you won’t know unless you visit GWHatchet.com.
Jake Sherman is The Hatchet editor in chief.
