I’m starting out this fall with a new position at the News and publishing under a new name.

If you’re reading this, you’ve most likely read my writing before as I was a reporter in the 2019-20 school year, the associate news editor for the 2020-21 school year and editor-in-chief for summer 2021. I wrote under the name “Elizabeth Taylor,” which you can still see in any of our print editions from the last two years.

This column is the most publicly I have ever stated that I am transgender and am in the process of changing my name in all documents to Luke Taylor.

I wouldn’t write about this at all, except that as a journalist I pride myself in honesty and transparency, and I want readers to know that it’s still my writing going into the paper.

I’m also grateful that student media at Eastern promotes diverse voices and has provided a space where I know I can announce this information and my friends, coworkers, and professors will support me.

Well, I hope I’m never accused of burying the lead, because that’s probably the biggest personal news I will ever have.

I am incredibly excited for this fall at the News. We’ve redesigned our website, we have a brand new masthead on the print edition, and we have big plans to involve more multimedia elements in our news coverage.

We’re bringing back podcasts, everybody! Last year, we had such a small staff and the pandemic stress was so bad that I never managed to sit down and record anything, but we’re going to start doing that again.

So far, we’re developing a movie commentary podcast, a weekly news podcast, and a music review podcast, and those are just the plans we put together during our pre-semester training.

I’m also excited to promote and utilize our social media even more than we have in the past. Did you know that the News has an Instagram account? Our photo editors are already making use of it to show off their work.

Last year felt pretty hopeless. Our staff was small, and mostly unable to be in person in the newsroom. We all had to do at least twice as much work as a normal year, with about half as many events to write about.

This year, we’re coming back strong. So many new people have joined our staff, and even in the first two nights we’ve been in the newsroom, students have stopped in just to ask if they can work for us.

They can, of course. Please come work for us.

This is already a year full of changes for the News, and I can’t wait to see where it leads.