I wrote a quick new piece summarizing the highlights of various social entrepreneurship panels at the University of Chicago and it’s up on Diskord (<– click here!).
I was editor-in-chief of this publication for just over a year. Our small but dedicated staff took pride in a respectable following. I am an outlier, but a high proportion of our staff and editors went on to become Fulbright and Rhodes scholars, work at NPR, BBC, and the New York Times, and garner various other accolades and top-notch positions. At the time, we were a print quarterly and published long-ish articles and essays regarding progressive social and political issues.
This past summer, some months prior to stepping away from the publication, I attended a journalism summit hosted by our sponsors Campus Progress. Diskord’s old style was outmoded in a Twitterific age. CP made a big push to move all publications on-line and have them produce short, timely, local pieces on a much more frequent print cycle.
The majority of Diskord’s editors and our most frequent contributors, who had been with the paper for years, had just graduated. Nonetheless, the community of remaining dedicated Diskordees began the migration of all of its back issues on-line — a long, manual process which, despite countless hours, is still largely incomplete. More challengingly, the technical and managerial responsibilities of an online weekly publication and PR cycle (and before the winter we were also publishing a weekly print) was about all that the publication’s leadership could handle, leaving us short-staffed for content writers.
Moving Diskord online and re-building the publication’s base over the past academic year whilst not attending school and having to officially step away from the publication to focus on my start-up was one of the most difficult and at times the most frustrating of my recent challenges. Attracting eyes to an article is an uphill battle. While the on-line readership appears to be greater than the print publication’s readership in previous years (this being the internet and all) and enough to keep our core of writers motivated, it was not until the success of recent Diskord events that we were able to significantly expand our staff, who start next quarter.
In the meanwhile, I am too overcommitted to schedule and conduct interviews and write quality new pieces, but feel moved to continue contributing in some way. In case you were wondering, such is the reason I have been uploading articles on cultural events I attended, with snapshots from my cheap camera attendant, despite this not really being my M.O. and considering myself ill-credentialled to write compelling and well-informed commentary on art and music. The new arts and culture writer seems motivated and in-tune with things musical, which is promising.
I encourage all to browse through the publication! Long larval struggle and all, we are metamorphosizing, and we’ll be around and growing and being the Diskord our readers love for a long time yet.
