Throughout the year, current Mustang Daily staff is constantly reminded of past staff. Whether it’s telling someone to check an article written by a former reporter or hearing from a potential source that “in the past the Mustang Daily has done (fill in the blank), so I don’t want to be quoted,” we’re constantly reminded of the past.
One thing most people around campus (and new staff members) probably don’t realize is that the Mustang Daily staff turnover rate is extremely high. Each year, Mustang Daily gets basically an entirely new staff. Some of the people might be the same, but they are typically in entirely new positions.
Take myself for example. I started out as a copy editor during Summer 2010, and this year, I found myself with my own desk in an office as the managing editor. And this is the best example of why the top editors sometimes need to be filled in or do some research on what Mustang Daily did four, five or six years ago. Our general manager has stayed the same, but for as long as I’m aware, the two “management” positions on the editorial side of the paper — the editor-in-chief (EIC) and their right-hand-(wo)man, the managing editor — change every single year. Even the Mustang Daily adviser position has done some shuffling amongst professors in the past five or so years.
The yearly staff shuffle, hiring of new staff members and, most importantly, hiring of the two top editor positions comes every spring quarter. So it’s that time of year again.
On Tuesday of last week, I was able to sit in on the EIC interview process and give my two-cents because of my current position at the paper, and the fact that I’m graduating in June. The three candidates presented themselves amazingly considering they were faced with seven journalism faculty members and myself (probably the least intimidating of the bunch), and each of them survived the Q-and-A portions of the interview. But like any hiring process, only one person can be chosen. So on Wednesday — after letting the hopefuls sweat it out for a night and probably run through their individual interviews a million times — the position was offered to journalism senior Brian De Los Santos, who accepted.
The way the process works is that next year’s EIC offers the managing editor position to someone they feel is fit for the position. It’s only a matter of days until De Los Santos completes this task.
And once that happens, I will enter my dreaded lame-duck period. It had to happen sometime, and it should help me overcome the stage of denial I’m in about graduating in a month.
After the managing editor is chosen, he or she and the EIC conduct interviews to hire next year’s staff. For anyone — no matter your major — who is interested in applying for a position at the Mustang Daily, now is the time to polish up your résumé and decide where you’d fit best on the staff. And if you have questions, feel free to stop by the newsroom; someone should be here to help you out. Until then, I’m going to go try to enforce a bunch of policies to prove I’m not a lame duck.