Have you ever had the same haircut for so long that it feels like the only haircut you can ever have? Then, when you finally start thinking about getting a haircut, all of your friends start to grumble and moan.

Why would you get your hair cut? What kind of style would you get? Where would you get it cut? Are you going to dye your hair?

When things stay the same for too long there is a tendency to fall into a routine. Falling into a routine affords you the ability to become strong on the field you’ve set for yourself, but renders you blind to what’s not on your turf.

When I first started having discussions on changes with now-graduated editors they spoke of this mythical thing called redesign. They said it’s where you evaluate and reevaluate everything and prepare yourself to change anything. They said it’s where you change everything but the name of the paper.

After years of not having the necessary resources and time I am happy to announce The George-Anne is getting our haircut.

If you’ve read us in years or semesters past and are reading this now you’ve probably noticed a few differences. Everything is bigger, there are different logos and fonts and section heads, and it’s a different style paper aesthetically. These more apparent changes are only a part of a process years in the making.

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What we want to do

The first and last motivator for all of this is to get more Georgia Southern University students to be in the know and to have us to be the lucky folks who get to help with that.

Be your first destination when big stuff happens

When we’ve got big things going on in or around our campus community we want to be the group that lets you know about it first. We want you to overhear students in your class talking about something interesting going on and have you go check our Twitter for the story.

Help students understand, not make decisions for them

We’re not going to tell you whether something is good or bad or try to sway you in any way in a news story. Bottom line. We want to provide information in whatever format best helps students fully understand complex issues so that they may make their own judgements.

Work with the community

We’d desperately like to not be a news monolith that is known only through logos and publication names. We want to work with other student organizations on events, publicity, charities and whatever else we can do to interact on a personal level with students and campus.

Not be boring

Newspaper is among the first words thought of when people start talking about things that are outdated, bland and boring. We don’t want to be that definition of a newspaper. Through redesign we’ve structured, restructured, structured and restructured again our sections, beats and cool subject matters that people our age find interesting.

Goals like those listed above are not groundbreaking, unique or new, but we think those are some of the things all media outlets should strive to do.

When you’re going through our papers this semester and you see something you especially dislike or something you might even like feel free to let us know. Part of interacting with students more is not only hearing their criticisms but responding accordingly, and you’re the first step in that equation. Let us know what you think and we’ll adapt in stride. Every individual student or university faculty member that reads our publication is valued beyond belief and we couldn’t be happier serving our favorite campus.

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Looking back

At the beginning of this past Summer our former student executive board left our new student executive board with an organization primed for expansion, change and remodeling. They were the ones who established our training methods, guidelines, stylesheets and whatever else that is tedious and difficult. More or less, those now-graduated friends of mine arrived at Student Media to something resembling a bomb shelter and left an estate. If it were not for them, Student Media would be maybe a quarter of the size it is now and have a decimal point of the stable structure it has.

I’d like to give a special thanks to some of the folks who allowed us to do this:

Arielle Cason, John Harvey, Chloe Douglas, Jessie Reese, Jennifer Burkhardt, Jackie Gutknecht, Shelby Farmer, Shakeem Holloway, Jose Gil, Matt Veal, Tasha Lund, Marissa Martin, Lindsay Gaskins, TJ Jackson, Chloe Douglas, Phillip Scroggin, Kelsey Paone, Courtney Tielking, Kimeko McCoy, Taylor Cooper, Alex LaSalle, Mallory Biggers, Jaclyn Amason,