A thank you to our readers

Photo credit: Rewon Shimray

The semester is ending. Once the Christmas decorations go up, we won’t lay back down for a good night’s rest until we hand in our last final. But if you are taking a break from your cram sessions or another mad dash to your next class, it is important to know before you click the next story or close this tab that this editorial is for you.

We would like to say thank you, so here it is.

First, thank you for hanging in there with us. This August we made a change, as we brought the print days down to two days a week instead of the four days a week we have done in the past. If you were wondering why Tuesday’s paper were still on the stands on Wednesday, that is why.

We cooled down our presses to connect with you more on social media, through our website and our app. Everyone is on social media, but know we are focused on bringing you fast, accurate content to wherever you are without you having to pick up a paper every morning.

We have also started something new at the Baylor Lariat. We hosted our first Fall Festival on Fountain Mall on Nov. 2. We gave out free haircuts and laid out blankets to watch “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Thank you for being there with us to watch a movie, get a haircut in public and play carnival games with us. It’s appreciated.

Thank you for caring. Every day you are being bombarded with information. There is an invisible funnel connecting your brain to your cell phone. If you don’t watch the news programs on television every morning or every night like clockwork, you still know what’s going on in the world. Any news network or random person on the internet can tell you what’s happening that day — with their own rendition, of course.

You are deciding each day when you read a news story or catch the headlining tweet what is important to know. While you do that unconsciously, you are shaping your own opinions about this world, about yourself and everyone else.

There is a lot of information out there, but thank you for caring to read what our reporters write. Although we live in a Baylor Bubble, the outside world is looking in on us, sometimes with a magnifying glass. We want to give you the story as unbiased as possible to you from a fellow peer.

You care enough to read it, but often you care enough to respond. You will tweet us, leave a comment on Facebook or you will email a letter to our editors. It makes us proud to know our work moves you engage with us.

Whether you are saving a newspaper where your name is mentioned or sending a slew of angry tweets our way, we are proud to receive them. A journalist’s job is deliver the news. But if the stories we report on move someone to demand the betterment of their school, city or country, we have done the moral service we are meant to do.

We, young journalists, only want the truth, no matter the color or side. We want it for you. Thank you for caring to read it.

Finally, we would like to thank you for giving our young careers a chance. In every newspaper or story published online, there is a writer calling and running around campus for a third source in a time crunch. Or there are editors in the newsroom working past deadline to get the latest breaking news in the paper. There are reporters and broadcasters working on every Lariat TV News story and radio play-by-play. Your peers are behind every byline, printed paper and tweet. You encourage us to keep writing, reporting and editing the world as is. One day, we will leave Baylor to pursue careers that The Lariat prepared us for and we wouldn’t be able to do it without you.

Thank you, again.

Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood Spiderman. Wait, wrong line.