On Sept. 20, The Statesman released its first full-sized print issue since the Spring 2021 semester.
Two thousand copies of our Back on Campus special issue were distributed throughout the Stony Brook campus, filling the news stands in Melville Library and the Student Activities Center that have stood empty for months.
Just over one year ago, The Statesman announced it would cease production of its weekly print newspaper. While our efforts are still focused primarily on digital content, The Statesman plans to release all of its special issues in print from now on — amounting to about one issue per month. This will allow us to reconnect with our student readers, some of whom were lost over the past two years, while remaining accessible to the surrounding Stony Brook community.
To us, the Back on Campus issue marks a new beginning for the paper — the culmination of a transformation that began in March 2020.
As of this fall, there is no one left at The Statesman who was on the editorial board prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. No one who remembers how the newspaper is “supposed” to function. Only three of our current members had their work in a print issue of The Statesman before now, and none of us had ever been involved in its layout, design or delivery. We are also, to our knowledge, the youngest editorial board the newspaper has seen in years.
But this year has also seen the newspaper return to full strength, or at least what we imagine full strength was like before the pandemic left us short-staffed and underfunded. Our editorial board now includes 25 members, and our weekly section meetings are overflowing with writers. In the coming weeks, you can expect more content than The Statesman has been capable of producing in some time.
With this rebirth comes an even greater respect among us for The Statesman and its history. For the first time in over two years, the very existence of our newspaper is not under threat. We hope you’ll join us as we use that fact as an opportunity to produce something greater than ever before.
