I am excited to welcome you to the 127th year of the CRLS Register Forum! Although I joined the RF three years ago as a freshman, it took a while for me to realize what an incredibly rich history this newspaper has. Learning about that history changed my outlook on the paper. It made me realize that the Register Forum’s legacy should serve as a continual cause for celebration—but that it should also always inspire us to pursue innovation.

Because we have been a newspaper for so long, it is easy to keep doing things a certain way just because that is what we are familiar with. But believing in the importance of journalism means always seeking to improve our work, including how we make that work more accessible by using the best tools available.

Taking the Register Forum online this year will be an important next step in the evolution of the paper. I say this considering a responsibility both to our contributors and to the broader community. We should not limit our student journalists to reporting on a monthly cycle. Most news is not reported at such an interval. We should not limit our readership to those who happen to get to school at the right time to pick up a print copy on our distribution day. To do our job of facilitating communication in the community, we need to share our work with the whole community. A Register Forum website will help us serve our community better and push us to grow as a modern newspaper.

Believing in the importance of student journalism means acknowledging the unique role that the student press can play in fostering media literacy from an early age. There are many ways to be involved in the Register Forum. But no matter what—whether you’re a writer or a photographer, a layout designer or a copy-editor—contributing to the Register Forum should never be a solitary act. Being a part of the newspaper, or even just reading it—if we’re doing our job well—should make you feel more connected to this community.

I know that the Register Forum has done that for me, and I look forward to continuing and improving upon our legacy of communication this year.

Correction: An earlier version of this piece referred to 2017-2018 as the Register Forum‘s 126th year. Since we were established in 1891, this is our 127th year.

This piece also appears in our September print edition.