Editor in chief

Most of us enjoy the longstanding traditions of this university: rubbing Testudo’s nose, shaking copies of a certain newspaper at basketball games and acquiring dozens of free T-shirts. We embrace change when we need to, but traditions give us something to fall back on.

Here at The Diamondback, few traditions have lasted over the years.

Since 1910, this newspaper has gone through plenty of seismic shifts. Founded as The Triangle and renamed 11 years later, The Diamondback printed far less during the strapped years of World War II. Then, in 1971, the newspaper became independent from the university amid heated controversy about censorship and the Vietnam War.

In recent memory, The Diamondback has stabilized and printed an edition for every weekday during the academic year.

Though it may not be comfortable, The Diamondback will break another one of its traditions this year, starting this week: printing a Friday edition.

Maryland Media Inc., the nonprofit charitable trust set up to run The Diamondback after the newspaper gained its independence, is not immune from the well-publicized struggles of the journalism industry. And historically, the campus population, and thus The Diamondback’s print edition readership, is lowest on Fridays by far.

Though I wasn’t yet a voting member of the Maryland Media Inc. board when the decision was made to cut the Friday print edition, I worked with The Diamondback’s former editor in chief, Yasmeen Abutaleb, during the meeting — and both of us fully support the decision.

This Friday, if you happen upon an empty rack or a stack of Thursday’s print papers, your first reaction may be one of sadness, shock or resignation. This news was certainly challenging for some members of the Diamondback staff to receive.

But I hope you soon have a change of heart similar to how the staff felt after this summer: Once we worked on brainstorming to bring you an excellent digital product on Fridays, our initial stresses transformed into excitement about using newfound time and energy to experiment with ideas we couldn’t feasibly implement in the past.

The newspaper’s staff will still work on Thursdays, and we’ll devote ourselves toward creating interactive, innovative online stories for the all-new Friday digital edition.

Here’s some of what you can look forward to in that digital edition:

Multipart story packages, including enterprise reporting

Expanded blog content, such as historical Diamondback editions

Interactive features such as maps and graphs

Curated videos discussing our favorite staff stories

Archival and statistical material we can’t fit in the print paper

Live chat opportunities with editors and special guests

Last year, we transitioned to a new website and a radically redesigned print edition. We launched our first mobile app. We saw our social media following pick up as we felt our way through new avenues of connecting with our readers.

In the newsroom, we’re looking at the cutting of the Friday print paper as an opportunity to capitalize on the gains we made online last year.

We’ll use the time we would have spent designing the print paper Thursday night to instead develop our website, creating a dynamic, fresh home base for all your university needs.

Similarly, you’ll see some helpful changes in our mobile app, which you can now download from the permanent QR code on the front page of the print paper. And you’ll notice some more changes in our print edition design.

We’re using new software to further tap into our social media, so be on the lookout for more reader engagement than ever before.

As part of our efforts to become more transparent, we’re including Twitter handles in our bylines and we again have individualized email addresses. I’ll write weekly columns on newsroom happenings and the week’s best content.

Everyone at this newspaper hopes the broader legacy of this decision will be a permanent culture change toward a more digital, forward-thinking publication.

The Diamondback is yet again plunging forward into the future, in the only way this stalwart newspaper knows how: with tenacity, aggressive optimism and a tendency never to feel satisfied. And it all begins this week.