Hello and welcome to the first post of my new blog as the editor of The Dialog newspaper. In this blog I’m going to take you behind the scenes of The Dialog and show you the discussions that happen in our newsroom. I want you to know why we make some of the decisions we do and how we work to bring you what I am proud to say is a damn fine campus newspaper.

I got this idea recently from a book titled The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. As journalists, especially journalists in the student press, we’re not detached observers of our communities but rather active participants in them. Part of being part of a community as a journalist isn’t just paying attention to it and reporting on it but also creating opportunities for the public, in our case students at George Brown College, to be part of the conversation.

To do that, we’re figuratively throwing open the door to our newsroom and I’ll be talking about what happened each week on this blog. If you have any questions or comments, I would encourage you to read our commenting guidelines and post them below. I will be happy to answer them the best I can.

You’re also more than welcome to literally visit our newsroom in room E122 of the Casa Loma campus, just knock and we’ll be happy to open our doors to you.

Video of us in the newsroom after we finished production of the Jan. 7 issue of The Dialog. Video: Erin Hudson/Canadian University Press.