By Dani Bernstein
Cavalier Daily Editor-in-Chief
On Feb. 19-20, six members of Cavalier Daily leadership attended the Annual Conference on College Newspapers at Yale University. At the conference we met with other student papers to discuss major business and literary issues facing us, and we also had the chance to meet with industry professionals to learn about journalism as a field and seek tips on how to improve our own coverage.
At roundtable workshops with other students, we found the major questions facing our papers are similar: how to remain financially stable; how to monetize a digital-first shift; and how to be representative of our student bodies both in the makeup of our staff and in the content of our coverage, among others. We learned about other papers’ business models and about their governing structures, as well as their strategies for staff retention and digital initiatives. We were pleased to see that we are on the forefront of the digital-first shift—we were the only paper there with a mobile app!
We left the conference feeling energized about the quality of The Cavalier Daily relative to other college papers and with some exciting ideas for the rest of our term, including developing a stronger source network, establishing a weekly student spotlight, incorporating advertisements into our mobile app, and enhancing our social media presence, among many others. The conference was both productive and fun, and those of us who went certainly got a lot out of it, which we were able to relay to the rest of The Cavalier Daily staff.