Joseph Pulitzer said that the purpose of good journalism is to put information before the reader briefly, clearly, picturesquely and accurately.

No matter what the story or format is, visual or text, good journalism must meet these four requirements.
And that is what we at The Appalachian are striving to do this year.

Budget cuts, voting rights and displaced tenants are just a few things affecting Appalachian State University students this year so far. And as that list grows, we at The Appalachian promise to deliver the news you want and the news we believe is most important to our audience in a fair, objective and ethical manner.

The Appalachian has made some changes over the summer that we believe are necessary and beneficial to our news organization as a whole. We’ve given our newspaper a cleaner look so that written and visual content complement one another better than before.

The way we publish information is continuing to change. We can tell stories in more visual ways than ever before, both in print and online.

And it’s because of this change that we have launched a new Facebook page titled The Appalachian Multimedia. The purpose of this new account is to highlight multimedia content produced and edited by our staff.

This in no way means that written or print journalism is going by the wayside at The Appalachian or that we are giving it the boot. As I mentioned last week in The Appalachian’s From the Newsroom blog: journalism is not changing. The way we tell stories is. It is important that we highlight that change.

Social media plays a vital role in storytelling and reporting today and will continue to play a very important role for us at The Appalachian. We are committed this year to utilizing our Twitter and Facebook accounts more effectively than we have in the past and bringing back some of our less active accounts, such as Instagram, to give our audience a behind-the-scenes look at our newsroom.

But of course, none of what we do is possible without the feedback from our readers and viewers. Whether you are a student, faculty member or graduate of Appalachian, I always want to hear your feedback.

Please feel free to email any questions, concerns or letters to me at editor@theappalachianonline.com, or call the office at 262-6149.

I’ve always seen journalism as a Constitutional duty. The First Amendment, after all, states that our Congress cannot create legislation to prohibit freedom of the free press, and I know that it is our duty, students or not, to protect and practice that right.

Senior Lecturer of Photojournalism at the University of Georgia Mark Johnson said at a college journalism conference this summer that we, as journalists, “have a Constitutional responsibility to commit acts of journalism.”

I could not agree more.

I’m looking forward to a wonderful year with an incredibly talented staff and editorial board, and I always welcome your feedback.

Bragg, a senior journalism and public relations major from Lillington, is the editor-in-chief.