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Nov. 19, 2009
The Maneater spring 2010 editorial board
Congratulations to The Maneater spring 2010 editorial board. We had a great pool of applicants this semester, and we appreciate everyone who applied. The new editors, with the assistance of their forerunners, will be responsible for the content that appears in the last four issues of this semester and will officially take over for the Dec. 11 issue. The new editors' names appear in bold.
Spring 2010 Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief — Josh Barone
Managing Editor — Mary Daly
Production Manager — LeeAnn Elias
Photography — Katie Currid
Copy Chief — Laura Swan
Copy Chief — Gabs Roman
Projects — Michael Sewall
Forum — Krissy Tripp
University News — Zach Toombs
Student Organizations — Travis Cornejo
City, State and Nation — Will Guldin
Crime — Lyndsie Manusos
Arts and Entertainment — Andrea Kszystyniak
MOVE — Theresa Berens
Sports — Sean Leahy
Online Development — Allan James Vestal
Multimedia — Amanda Bromwich
Assistant Editor — Katie Moritz
Assistant Editor — Kaylen Ralph
I'd like to thank the editors who are departing from their positions — Forum Editor Amanda Wysocki, Projects Editor Megan Stroup, MOVE Editor Chase Koeneke, Assistant Editor Theresa Berens and Student Organizations Editor Krissy Tripp — for a job well done.
Oct. 31, 2009
The Maneater's Web site wins a Pacemaker
AUSTIN, Texas -- The Maneater has just been awarded the 2009 Online Pacemaker Award.
Winners of the award, which is seen as the highest honor in collegiate journalism, were announced at the National College Media Convention on Saturday afternoon in Austin, Texas.
As the Online Development Editor for themaneater.com, I want to express my sincere thanks to everyone who has helped make this honor a reality. This is the first time The Maneater has won the award since 2002. This win was the result of many, many staffers' hard work.
I would like to recognize Mike Tigas, Carolina Astrain, Justin Myers and Esten Hurtle, all former editors of the Web site for their extraordinary contributions to our success. Their efforts have made themaneater.com one of the best college newspaper Web sites in the country.
A special thanks also goes out to Editor-in-Chief Josh Barone and Managing Editor Mary Daly and to their predecessors for help in developing the Web site.
The Maneater is working every day to expand and refine its presence online. We are truly honored to accept this award.
April 1, 2009
Maneater staff elects new editor-in-chief and business manager
The Maneater staff has elected a new editor-in-chief and business manager for the 2009-2010 school year.
Josh Barone will serve as the paper's editor-in-chief. He currently serves as the paper's university news editor. He has chosen Copy Chief Mary Daly to serve as the paper's managing editor.
Ami Albert will serve as the paper's business manager. She currently serves as The Maneater's sales manager.
March 31, 2009
Our April Fool's issue
April Fool's!
If you happen to see an odd-looking front page and subsequent 7-page section around today's issue of The Maneater, that's because it is our annual satirical April Fool's issue, this year titled, "The Manateeter." None of the content is in any way true or accurate.
Even though today is March 31, because The Maneater publishes on Tuesdays and Fridays, this was the most feasible way of continuing our tradition.
I encourage you to check out the issue, which you can find in Maneater bins across campus and town or by downloading the PDF, which you can get in the upper right corner of the homepage at themaneater.com. And remember, we do have a normal Tuesday issue updated on today's Web site as well as inside The Manateeter April Fool's edition.
Thanks and enjoy,
Michael Sewall, managing editor
Feb. 20, 2009
Why we published 'Put down your beer and volunteer'
For better or worse, we see The Maneater's Forum section as a place for candid conversation and freedom from censorship. We present the majority opinion of our editorial board on campus issues and offer a free forum for MU students and others to share their thoughts, and we also hire six columnists to share their opinions.
Our columnists are selected after they submit sample two columns, and The Maneater's editorial board votes to select six. We give preference given to those applicants who tackle campus issues and who show strong writing. Once our columnists have been hired, we generally edit for length and style, not for content. As our Forum page states, the opinions expressed in columns and cartoons don't necessarily reflect the opinion of The Maneater's editorial board.
This policy has gotten us in trouble before. In 2006, The Maneater ran a number of letters to the editor protesting one of columnist Dan Friesen's 2007 columns. In fact, we added a page to the Forum section to accommodate the extra letters.
At press time, we had received 18 letters from students protesting Sean Nahlik's column from Monday's edition of The Maneater. We have again expanded our Forum section to accommodate more of those responses, and they will all run online.
I'm glad to see the response. We don't intend these columns or the opinions expressed in our editorials to go uncontested. Today we also have two letters from people who disagree with our editorial stance against concealed carry on campus, also from Monday's issue of The Maneater. And we've made it as easy as possible to respond. In January, we introduced a link next to every story to submit a letter to the editor.
I hope you'll continue to tell us and our columnists when we've got it wrong. Our goal is to start a conversation, and that conversation is certainly going strong today.
If you are outraged by the content of this opinion page, I would also encourage you to check back to themaneater.com at the end of the semester, when we will release applications for next year's columnist positions. Each applicant must submit two sample columns. If hired, you would be responsible for one 600-word column every week, and we pay $10 per column.
Feb. 18, 2009
The Maneater turns 54 today
Today, The Maneater celebrates its 54th year as the official student voice of MU.
The paper was founded in 1955, when sociology major Joe Gold was elected editor-in-chief of the Missouri Student, a newspaper that had lost its touch.
"The name 'Missouri Student' reflected the editorial policy of the former paper quite well," Gold said in his paper's first issue. "It signified nothing."
He set about radically changing the paper's editorial policies and, to better reflect his new editorial stance, changed the name to The Maneater. The name was meant to reflect the paper's new, fiercer reporting.
"If you want to keep us out, better bar the door," Gold's policy stated. "And don't try getting rough or screaming 'libel' when a Maneater reporter crashes your meetings. When The Maneater gets mad, all hell is going to break loose. You've been warned."
Those policies still hang in our newsroom today, and as celebrate 54 years of reporting, we hope you'll keep reading and writing. And maybe even get involved.
More on The Maneater
Feb. 9, 2009
Paul responds to Maneater editorial
Last Friday, Missouri Students Association President Jordan Paul responded to The Maneater's editorial on his appointment of Joe Fessahaye in a letter to the editor. There wasn't room for the letter in print Friday, but it will appear in tomorrow's edition of The Maneater.
We welcome responses to any article, column or editorial in The Maneater. Just click on "Send a letter to the editor" to the right of any article on themaneater.com. You can also bring your letter to The Maneater offices at McReynolds Hall or send it by e-mail to forum@themaneater.com.
Jan. 22, 2009
Themaneater.com redesign
So, assuming you're not reading this via RSS feed, you can probably tell that the site looks a bit different today.
Over the past few months, we've been planning to migrate our site from the older, 0.96-based version of Django we've been running since February to the latest release (1.0.2) for a number of reasons, including additional security features, extensibility and ease of training. The problem, of course, is that you don't migrate a site with at least a decade's worth of content by patching it up in a couple of days.
There was already a fair amount of stuff the editorial board wanted to change or add at a bit of a deeper level than, say, just adding a new application like we did with the campus guide -- so we've been adding those new features at the same time.
Most of the changes in how the site works are on the back end (programming side), but we've obviously changed the design a bit and revised just about everything to run under one of a few common frameworks to simplify things and streamline future development -- which allowed us to more easily put together such things as the new photo browser I'll talk about in a second.
So, enough already -- what's the new stuff?
- The new design, of course, including an even more substantial redesign for MOVE Magazine.
- A larger photo browser to accompany every article and photo blog entry.
- A form linked from every article and blog entry to help you e-mail that content to other people.
- Another form to make it easier to send letters to the editor.
- Support for linking page layouts and their contents, though we've still got to link most of these.
- Expanded support for Twitter.
- A more detailed search function.
- More information about individual staffers and their contributions to the paper.
- Current weather conditions; we'll be adding forecasts later this semester.
- A calendar of upcoming events.
We've also got several more features currently in development, so be sure to check back periodically for those.
Thanks for coming to themaneater.com to get your news about MU and the community and world beyond; if you have any suggestions how to make the site more useful for you, be sure to let us know!
Jan. 4, 2009
The Maneater's top articles of 2008
Most newspapers do a piece like this either before the new year, or at least the day of. But most newspapers also don't have an entire staff that spreads out across the country to go on long winter breaks. Either way, here are the ten stories from The Maneater in 2008 that got the most play online this year. Keep in mind, some of these were picked up by other outlets' Web sites, so the total count of views might not all come from our site. And we could never count how many thousands of times these articles were read in our print edition. Enjoy!
10. This one, "A look at Missouri's ballot initiatives"was put together by outgoing MOVE Editor Lindsay Eanet, who lended a hand with our elections coverage. This Oct. 30 article picked up 1,173 views.
9. An Apr. 22 obituary for MU student Evan Dalgaard, entitled "Student remembered as cheerful, fun-loving", was written by our current Editor in Chief Elliot Njus, while he was still the University News editor. The article had 1,177 views.
8. Outgoing Student Organizations Editor Anna Koeppel wrote this article, "Two apartment complexes to offer MU student housing", this summer, after it was discovered that the university was expecting record enrollment levels. The article had 1,196 views.
7. Sports writer Nick Forrester penned "Tigers' offense parts the 'Red Sea'" after the football team's victory over Nebraska, and features 20 pictures from Photo Editor Jeff Lautenberger and photograher Matt Cavanah. The article had 1,259 views online, but you should have seen how it looked on the front page.
6. This is one from yours truly, from Feb. 19, when I was just a lowly writer: "Rebate checks to stimulate economy". It had 1,382 views.
5. Former Features Editor Kristin Torres, who will be our Arts and Entertainment Editor this semester, wrote this: "New album shows us the same old cure". This Oct. 20 article picked up 1,442 views.
4. This Apr. 25 article, "Askren hopes to go into MMA", is another one from Nick Forrester, and came out obviously before Ben Askren made a little trip to Beijing for something called the Olympics. This one picked up 1,443 views.
3. Third place went to "Big Ten football? Wake me when it's over", a sports column from JJ Stankevitz that was published on Sept. 8. This one had 1,757 views.
2. In second place was another sports columnist, Mark Levitt, and his piece "Fans disrespect each other while camping out for Nebraska tickets" with 2,474 views.
1. While JJ Stankevitz' sports column "Enjoy it, Tech, while you can" was in response to Texas Tech's win against win against No. 1-ranked Texas. The piece blew away all the articles on the list with 4,401 views.
Edit: This post was corrected to reflect the topic of JJ Stakevitz's ccolumn.
Dec. 30, 2008
What made headlines in 2008
Take a look back at some of The Maneater's top stories this year through this photo slide show.
The slide show might not show up in some RSS feeds. You'll need to view the post on themaneater.com. You can also check out the chancellor's here. What was your big news this year? Let us know in the comments.
