The editorial board needs your opinion! The Hill News was originally founded as a newspaper in 1911, and we recognize that a lot has changed over the past 112 years. With digital media on the rise, The Hill News has been dedicated to keeping true to our print roots. But we also are excited about the potential growth on the digital side. Overall, we want to deliver our content to you, our dear readers, in whatever way will best connect with you.  

Thus, The Hill News editorial team decided to conduct a survey to learn how to best cater to the desires of our readership. This week we will conduct a survey that will provide us with data about your preferred method of receiving information. The survey can be accessed by scanning the QR code present alongside this article. This survey can also be found via Presence. We want you to make your voice heard!  

The survey will give readers the option to indicate what their current consumption patterns look like, as well as what type of media they would prefer to consume. Those surveyed will also be given the chance to indicate if they have any interest in writing for us in the future, as well as an opportunity to make suggestions for future issues.  

This survey is especially important to us at this time considering the printing market post-COVID. This past Fall, in the fallout of the pandemic, the company that we printed with had a printer malfunction that forced us to change the style of our paper to one of a lesser quality (as you may remember from the drastic change in appearance of The Hill News halfway through the semester). They also significantly increased the price of printing. This Spring, we have switched to a new printing company that allows us to print at our even higher quality while being charged an equal price to the new price our previous company was imposing. However, this led to us going over our printing budget for the semester due to the increased printing costs. So, this is truly a turning point for The Hill News. We want to continue printing physically, but we need your support. Let us know what you want to see from your favorite university newspaper in the semesters to come. Advocate for the beauty of traditional print publication, the novelty of the new digital age, or both!  

No matter what happens regarding our funding, The Hill News will never stop publishing student work and will not stop fighting for the students and faculty of St. Lawrence University. Your participation in this survey will give us a better idea of which mediums of publication we should use in order to advocate for and maintain these values that we hold so dearly. Thank you for reading this week’s edition. Without readers like you this paper wouldn’t be possible.