With the long Labor Day Weekend over, and somehow relieved that hurricane Gustav did not affect the people of New Orleans as much as was expected, we can now turn our attention to work again, and I am getting ready to fly to New Haven, Connecticut, for the launch of the Yale Daily News’ first edition following our rethinking/redesign project. My colleague Dr. Pegie Stark Adam joined me to work with the students—-an unusual experience for us, since university newspapers are not usually part of our work.
We both have academic backgrounds and found ourselves playing the role of professors many times during the course of the project, but getting inspiration from students who are among the smartest anywhere in the world, and, although Yale University does not offer a traditional journalism or mass communications major, these students, whose majors expand the full university catalog of offerings, it seems, all exhibited a great desire to communicate the stories around the campus, and to do it as professionally and ethically as the most responsible professional journalists we have ever worked with.
Tonight, we watch and coach the team as they prepare the Wednesday, September 3 edition incorporating the new thinking and design. As all opening nights, it should be exciting and everyone will be a bit nervous. I plan to report from Yale University the next three days, with guest spots on this blog from Pegie on how the architecture of the campus inspired her color palette, as well as from Reed Reibstein, a Yale sophomore and YDN staffer, who interned with Garcia Media this summer, and whose talents and interests in typography helped us to create the typographic scheme for the YDN.
Stay tuned. There is no better time to be on a college campus: arrival of students, all fresh and eager, and, indeed, a newly rethought and designed campus newspaper to welcome them.
TheMarioBlog posting #82