I’ve seen more sunrises than I ever thought I would thanks to this paper. 

I couldn’t begin to count the number of sleepless nights I’ve had in the Daily Trojan’s newsroom. But, I could probably count the number of times I told myself I’d never come back,  that I would go and walk into that sunrise and be a happier person: zero.

Like it or not, I hate sunrises. And I love student journalism.

It’s been my greatest pride to work for the Daily Trojan. I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many endlessly impressive journalists and students, and now the fact that I get to lead the paper and help shape it even a little is still mind-boggling to me. As editor-in-chief, I hope to continue producing the type of quality student journalism that first brought me to USC and help us find new ways to innovate.

I want to continue the work of my predecessor, Nicholas Corral, and help the Daily Trojan’s newsletter — which you can subscribe to here — flourish. We know readers aren’t picking up our print editions every day, and many of our readers aren’t on campus at all, so we want to meet you all where you’re at: your inboxes. Every morning, you can expect the top four headlines from DT and a list of three things to do on campus every day. And if there’s ever breaking news, we want to be the first ones to let you know.

Not only that, but this fall, we’ll be launching a sports-exclusive newsletter. Trojans love sports; we want people to get the incredible coverage only we can provide. We know no one else is as dedicated to covering track and field as we are.

Though the name is still being workshopped, readers will be able to get a wide range of sports content, plenty of football coverage, and we’ll keep you up to date on everything USC athletics.  

We also know that, to many on this campus, the Daily Trojan can be a bit of a mystery. So with every newsletter, we’ll have a little note from the editor who made it so you can get to know them better. In case you missed it, over the summer, I predicted Colombia would win the World Cup. History has proven me wrong yet again.

In addition, we want to get to know you better; we’re here to meet the needs of our community. This campus has a student body of over 40,000 people; add to that our local neighborhoods, and that’s a lot of ground to cover. Our staff can only be so representative, so we want to hear from readers about what stories matter to them. The Daily Trojan isn’t just for students; it’s for our faculty, our neighbors and anyone with a remote interest in the goings-on of USC. 

This semester, with the help of our Outreach team, we’re hoping to really get involved with the community. You can expect us to start releasing Google Forms where people can share their opinions on the Daily Trojan and our coverage. The best way to ensure you get those forms is by subscribing to our newsletter. 

In addition, we want to be more approachable, so we are aiming to host tabling events around campus where you can come and ask your student journalists questions. Feel free to stop by if you have a story idea, want to ask about how we operate or are generally curious. 

We also hope to host speaker events where anybody can come and hear from real industry professionals. Whether you’re a journalist or not, the advice could be indispensable. In the past, our speaker events were exclusive to staff, and we’ve heard from incredible journalists from a variety of outlets, from the Los Angeles Times to Rolling Stone. We want to bring that to you.

One thing we want to emphasize is that we remain committed to producing high-quality student journalism. We’re improving our efforts to catch any artificial intelligence-generated writing before it goes out, and, if it does, we’ll hold ourselves accountable. Stories will be taken down, and a “For the record” notice will go out on our website and live on our Instagram. Writers have been and will continue to be removed from our staff if it’s discovered they used AI. 

We want students, flaws and all, to write our stories, not chatbots. 

As journalists, we’ve seen the power of social media, and that’s something we can’t ignore for much longer. We’ve seen some tremendous growth in our social presence, but there’s still plenty of room for us to improve. 

This year, we’re looking to increase the frequency of our posts. We also want to go beyond our regular posts and expand our short-form video content — you might have even seen me on our Instagram before you read this article. You can expect to see a lot more of our faces this semester.

The Daily Trojan has been around for 113 years, and I’ve been so fortunate to get to be around for three of them. It is my sincere hope that we get to continue for another 100.

Maybe seeing another sunrise isn’t so bad if it means I get to ensure that this paper gets even one more day.