If you would have told me a year ago that I would be editor-in-chief of The Daily Eastern News, I would have been shocked.

This is my senior year at Eastern, along with this being my second year working at the DEN. In the last year here at the DEN, I worked as the writer of the weekly newsletter while also being part of the DEN’s news reporting team.  

Along with that, I am studying broadcast journalism, and I am also the president of Hello Dali Improv Comedy Troupe at Eastern.  

I have known that I’ve wanted to be in the world of broadcast journalism ever since I did a research presentation in eighth grade. Learning about how individuals can story tell and deliver information to the community had me very interested in the career path. 

I came into college interested most in the workings of radio but was kindly invited in by members of the DEN’s staff. Now, I am the sitting fall editor-in-chief. 

My first goal of the semester was to try to help update and improve the overall DEN newsroom, which I was lucky to get a jumpstart on over the summer with some rearranging of the space and adding tools to help with our team this semester.  

For this upcoming semester, I am looking forward to seeing how many ways our team of student journalists can deliver stories to the community. This semester’s plan is to include more audio, photos and video stories along with a new coat of paint on the weekly newsletters I helped to develop last year. We will still be continuing with our weekly print edition of our newspaper, along with our daily coverage on our website and social media.

Harking back a bit, I also am a big advocate for branching out our coverage on different platforms. Our team in the past has shown an interest in podcasting. Over the summer, I along with our summer editor-in-chief, redesigned our podcasting studio to help with the growth of our many podcasts.  

We are looking to continue some of our podcast series that we had from last year alongside some new ones, so stay posted on those developments when they release.  

It will be a remarkably interesting task to help with the weekly design of our newspaper, as up to this point my design experience has been mostly designing a digital newsletter. But I’m looking forward to the horizons I will be awakened to and the challenges that I might have to face when helping put it together.  

Now I know there is a big elephant in the room– or maybe I should say elephant and donkey. But as I am sure we are all aware, the election this year, like every election before, is the most important election of our lifetimes. 

This means the DEN will be raising the amount of typical political coverage than in some years past, covering the election from as many viewpoints and angles as our team can find. With a blend of local and national election coverage, it will surely be a packed semester of political content.  

I’m eager for the staff that I have assembled to go out and cover all the happenings of the Eastern community. With some new faces joining our team and some old ones in new roles, it’s looking to be another semester of hard work for our team.

To read about the rest of The News‘ editorial staff, click here.

Gunnar Olson can be reached at 581-2812 or deneic@gmail.com.