Dear reader,

We’re back, and we hope you like our new (old) look!

The Kent Stater is the only news source solely dedicated to serving the Kent State community, and we are beyond excited to begin bringing our coverage physically to you more consistently and in traditional newspaper style.    

The Stater began in 1926, with the name The Searchlight in its first year. It later became The Daily Kent Stater and printed five times a week through spring 2014. In the years since, we went down to printing four days a week, then three, then two –  and stopping completely once the pandemic hit.

Like many professional newsrooms across the country, the pandemic brought challenges to maintaining staff numbers, which of course impacts the coverage we are able to provide the community.

In the following semesters since the pandemic, we produced one or two special edition print papers each semester, while simultaneously building our staff and reviving our content online.

This semester, Stater staff has produced the strongest coverage, published the most articles and maintained the largest staff since fall 2021 – and probably even some semesters before that.

The transition into publishing at least five stories a day, along with weekly comics, sports reaction articles and newsletters, required time and commitment from every single person on staff. We have been beyond fortunate to work with such talented student journalists – our friends.

Our thought now is: What’s next?

We want to ensure we are pushing ourselves to provide news and information to the university community through a variety of formats. So, we decided to return to our roots.

We wanted to hit a balance of informative, fun and Halloween content with this paper. Our staff spent countless hours writing, designing, editing and shooting photos for this paper, and we’re beyond thrilled to share it with you.

We believe these print papers allow more connection with you, our audience, and we hope to bring you more soon, consistently.

The Stater and KentWired.com are here to deliver you vital and timely information because when people are informed, they’re better people. We remain independent from the university and are entirely student run, and we value transparency and objectivity.

According to the SPJ Code of Ethics, our job as journalists is to seek truth and report it.

We attend public meetings, submit public records requests and most importantly, we ask a lot of questions.

We believe in the power of information, which is why we encourage transparency from our government and our university. And we deliver those messages to you.

First and foremost, to Stater staff: Thank you all for your intense commitment, your passionate energy and your fantabulous ideas (and thanks for putting up with us, too). You all are the most talented journalists ever, not to mention you are all just amazing people.

Also, we’d like to thank our new, wonderful Stater adviser, Cheryl Powell, who has brought an abundance of experience and knowledge to our staff and a fresh new perspective to our newsroom.

And thank YOU, our readers, for your continued support as we grow and find our place back on stands.

Now, go out and have a rocking Halloweekend!

Happy Halloween!

Izzy and Grace

Isabella Schreck is editor-in-chief. Contact her at [email protected]. Grace Springer is managing editor. Contact her at [email protected].