Welcome to our special online-only reading week issue of The Uniter! In one way, we’re still doing the same thing we always do: sharing stories. We cover the basic elements of what’s going on in arts, in culture, in our city and on campus. Our goal here is to help you stay informed and to maybe even learn a thing or two.

But in every issue - and in this issue, especially - we’re also sharing your voice. To create the Highlights from Black Media story, we put a short survey out on social media to collect responses and ideas. For Hitting puberty in the advent of instant messaging, we heard from those who grew up connecting (or disconnecting) over IM.

Pieces like Students reach out with White Cane Awareness Week are often inspired by the presence and outreach of groups here on our campus. We couldn’t have put these stories together without your input, so thank you!

In this issue, we also have a really jam-packed comments section. In these stories, volunteer writers get a chance to share their opinions and to elaborate about the issues and topics they believe in. It’s a departure from the rest of our paper, where we aim not to tell one side of a story, but as many sides as possible.

That doesn’t mean we abandon all facts. The difference between a quality, convincing opinion piece and an online rant lies in the background research and in the fact-checking time the editorial team puts in. Pages upon pages of city reports were referenced, for example, in the creation of City needs to rise to the challenge of climate change.

If you’d like to get involved in any of these sections, there’s still time! We’ll hold our next volunteer orientation on March 1 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in our office, ORM14. And following that, on Thursday, we’ll pitch the third-last issue of the year, so there are a few chances left to get your work into The Uniter.

We’d also love to hear more from you about what we should be covering, what we might be missing and what you want to read more about. If you’ve got some more ideas to share, check out our brief Readers Survey.

 

Published in Volume 71, Number 21 of The Uniter (February 22, 2017)