As my term as Editor-in-Chief comes to a close, I’ve taken some time to look back on my time at the Blue & Gold. It’s been a busy year for me, and I am extremely grateful that the Blue & Gold has been a part of it. I joined the newspaper team my sophomore year, but wasn’t a very active member until Junior year, so I am super grateful that I was given the opportunity to lead the Blue & Gold this year. 

We lost a large amount of numbers with the senior graduating class, so that was definitely one of the papers’ biggest struggles this year. However, I am extremely proud of the articles produced by the writers within the program, and am excited to see what they continue to publish within the coming years.

When I think about the impression that I am leaving upon the Blue & Gold, I think most about our reach across social media. Last year, the paper switched to a digital domain, and with that, the Blue & Gold joined Instagram. Throughout the year, I have really tried to outreach, market, and advertise our paper and articles through that site. Within the last month alone, we have reached 1.3k accounts, and received 5.7k views. In comparison to the information given from last years’ editors, as of February 2023 the account only reached 589 accounts in its entirety. I can attribute a lot of this growth to the addition of the Blue & Gold Q&A- a new hallway interview series championed by myself and sophomore writer Lucy Chamberlain. 

Another change made to the paper would be our meeting style. With the loss of a lot of graduating senior writers, I was challenged to find ways to increase our membership. Attempting to make newspaper meetings more accessible, we changed the meeting times from early mornings to during Thursday long homerooms, and instead of a rigid schedule and itinerary, writers and members of the Blue & Gold paper were able to drop in throughout the meeting to discuss updates, receive help, talk with their editors, and more, at their convenience. 

I have been very grateful for Mrs. Aylward, the editors, the writers, and the viewers for joining me in this year of the Blue & Gold newspaper, and I hope to see the Blue & Gold continue to grow and flourish.