Last three weeks

Well, the Daily is in the home stretch of my tenure as editor in chief, as we hit our final three weeks of publication before I leave for the summer. I'll be in Seattle working for the Mariners via MLB.com, and hope you all check out my stuff online at seattlemariners.com :)
In the meantime, though, the Daily will be under new leadership, as Pat Shaver was selected by the Iowa State Daily publication board as this summer's/next years's editor in chief.
It's exciting, but it's tough at the same time. I'm excited to move on, to come back in the fall and to graduate in December. I think it's about time for me to be moving on, and let someone else take the reins.
But, at the same time, I've poured a lot into this newspaper. Planning, meeting, mediating, reporting, troubleshooting, chaos managing and, of course, the daily ins-and-outs of a newspaper grind.
Some things have worked well. We've successfully created a redesign of the newspaper, revamped highnote into a much more attractive product, AMUSE, and have really stepped up our coverage and design as of late.
There have, without questions, been failures, too. We've made mistakes, had misprints, misspelled names, locations, etc. We barely said a word about the severe winter storms that devastated much of Iowa and the Midwest.
But, of course there are going to be those successes and failures. It's as much a part of everyday life as it is a newspaper. My biggest success, though, the one thing I'll walk away from with an immense amount of pride, is this:

The Iowa State Daily newsroom is a fun place to be again. People want to be there working, breaking stories and just conversing with coworkers/friends on a daily basis.

That was my biggest goal, without question. And without question, it happened. And that will set this paper up for success for many years to come, as long as the atmosphere doesn't go stale again.

You see, when I first started reporting (at the Daily Vidette at Illinois State) it was boring. The newsroom was dead. No one wanted to be there, and everyone complained about it. It had been hardly any different in my next two years at Iowa State, and I witnessed the news section go through nearly TEN editors in one year, and that includes me being the sole news editor for the final month last spring.

To put that into perspective, we've had just one news editor quit this year, and it had nothing to do with the newsroom. The sports editors have been the same all year, and FYI changed beause our former editor, Rob, is studying abroad this semester.

And honestly, that makes me smile.

I've worked pretty damn hard this year, and I'm proud of the accomplishments of this newspaper. And I know I won't go down in history as the best editor in chief of the Iowa State Daily, but that's OK. Because although my competitive spirit wants me to be known as "the greatest," that would have been nearly impossible for me to achieve. There was too much to put back together.

Consider this: At the start of my editor in chief stint, we were still trying to shake off the bugs from the "Ames for Dummies" debacle. (If you don't know, please, don't ask). We had no idea what our newspaper was going to look like, and have been tweaking things as recently as February. We completely cut highnote out of our Thursday rotation, and spent all year developing AMUSE, a section released two weeks ago for the first time.

The ship stayed upright. We did a fantastic job covering many things throughout the year. The three biggest that come to my mind are our election night coverage, the Big 12 Tournament in Oklahoma City and the drowning of Abel Bolanos.

So in all, it's been a successful year, without question. And in the end, I can walk out of the newsroom in three weeks with my hear up high. And I take a lot of solice in that.

So thanks to all the readers, callers, letter-writers, critics and supporters. I've tried my very best this year to cater to you, the reader. Because in the end, it's not about how I'll be remembered, or how the Daily will be remembered this year.

It's about you. It's your newspaper. It always has been, and it always will be. And I was lucky as hell to be able to serve you this year.