Eric Roper

The staff of The Hatchet elected Alex Byers to be their next editor in chief on Thursday. Byers will take over the position on May 1, pending the approval of the The Hatchet’s Board of Directors.

A junior from Minneapolis, Minn., Byers has worked at The Hatchet since 2007, first as a sports writer, then as an assistant sports editor and eventually metro news editor. Some of his largest plans for next year involve more online content, so if you’re reading this post then get excited!

The discussion about arming UPD made its way into the local media this week when the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU invited both myself and local ANC chair Asher Corson to present some of the facts and viewpoints on the issue. Our coverage of this topic has been extensive, and the amount of phone calls on the show indicated that there is at least some interest beyond campus and Foggy Bottom.

I’ll let the show speak for itself, you can listen here.

It has certainly been a momentous year at The Hatchet.

This Sunday at their annual convention, The Associated Collegiate Press presented The Hatchet with two Pacemaker awards – for its print and online editions. The ACP is the largest organization dedicated to the student press, and a Pacemaker is considered one of the highest awards in college journalism.

This comes on the heels of an announcement last spring that The Society of Professional Journalists named The Hatchet the best non-daily student newspaper in the nation.

Both of these awards are major achievements, and they are a credit to the quality journalism coming out of this paper. This is also the first year that The Hatchet has received all three awards, which speaks to the growing stature of The Hatchet as both a newspaper and an online news source.

The Hatchet was one of 10 papers selected in the ACP’s non-daily newspaper category, and one of 5 selected in the non-daily Web site category. The Hatchet was the only paper to receive the SPJ award.

The high quality of journalism can be seen in each issue of The Hatchet, but I can tangibly show you how far our Web site has come in recent years. When we last won the online Pacemaker in 2006, our Web site looked like this. Since then we have completely redesigned the site, revamped our blogs, and added video, podcasts and other interactive features.

I wanted to take a moment to respond to several readers who e-mailed us about a front page story in today’s paper which said GW was no longer the most expensive school in the country. One reader pointed to a recent CNN article, which said GW still has the highest tuition.

CNN is ranking purely tuition, whereas our story was based on tuition and required costs (like room and board). In 2007, GW made national news as the first school to pass $50,000 in required costs, which are important given that room and board often amount to about $10,000. Today’s article was about how Sarah Lawrence is now leading that pack, according to a consulting firm that compares these figures.

To base a ranking solely on tuition is misleading, because students are actually paying a great deal more. So while the CNN article is factual, our coverage of this issue has concentrated on the entire price since you cannot enroll at GW – or Sarah Lawrence for that matter – without paying $10,000 for housing and food.